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An intensive introduction to African American political thought that focuses on major ideological trends and political philosophies as they have been applied and interpreted by African Americans. Elements of the class include debates and conflicts in black political thought, historical contest of African American social movements, and discussions of the relationship between black political thought and major trends in Western thought. Mar...more
The purpose of this course is to examine the African American experience in the United States from 1863 to the present. Prominent themes include the end of the Civil War and the beginning of Reconstruction; African Americans' urbanization experiences; the development of the modern civil rights movement and its aftermath; and the thought and leadership of Booker T. Washington, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Martin Luth...more
This course introduces the viewer to African-American history, with particular emphasis on the political thought and protest movements of the period after 1930, focusing on selected individuals who have shaped and been shaped by modern African-American struggles for freedom and justice.
This lecture focuses on the role of white southern terrorist violence in brining about the end of Reconstruction. Professor Blight begins with an account the Colfax Massacre. Colfax, Louisiana was the sight of the largest mass murder in U.S. history, when a white mob killed dozens of African Americans in the April of 1873. Two Supreme Court decisions would do in the judicial realm what the Colfax Massacre had done in the political. On the ...more
In this lecture, Professor Holloway discusses the New Negro mentality, a new black consciousness forged out of political and economic frustration and the cultural shocks of the Great Migration. The New Negro ideology was articulated on a wide scale after World War I, when the promises of democracy at home went unfulfilled. Marcus Garvey best articulated this new consciousness through his Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), the ...more
In this lecture, Professor Holloway discusses how race influenced public policy by examining some of the key cultural symbols of the past few decades, all in an effort to answer the question: how is race used in our society? Professor Holloway discusses Bill Clinton's policies in particular, honing in on his ability to connect with the African American community, the controversy surrounding Lani Guinier's cabinet appointment, and his Natio...more
The Abolition of the Slave Trade in America and Britain. Internationally-renowned historian Professor Simon Schama was an undergraduate, and later Fellow, at Christ's College, Cambridge before becoming Fellow and Tutor in Modern History at Brasenose College, Oxford. He then spent 13 years as professor at Harvard and is currently Professor of Art History and History at Columbia University in New York, where he specialises in European cultur...more
In this lecture, Professor Holloway documents the "Great Migration," beginning in the first decade of the twentieth century and continuing with increasing pace until the mid-1920s. During this time, black Americans relocated from the rural South to the urban North. This general shift in the population marked a moment of self-determination for African Americans, demonstrating that they were prepared to leave behind the lives they had made i...more
This lecture opens with a discussion of the myriad moments at which historians have declared an "end" to Reconstruction, before shifting to the myth and reality of "Carpetbag rule" in the Reconstruction South. Popularized by Lost Cause apologists and biased historians, this myth suggests that the southern governments of the Reconstruction era were dominated by unscrupulous and criminal Yankees who relied on the ignorant black vote to rob a...more
Professor Blight uses Herman Melville's poem "On the Slain Collegians" to introduce the horrifying slaughter of 1864. The architect of the strategy that would eventually lead to Union victory, but at a staggering human cost, was Ulysses S. Grant, brought East to assume control of all Union armies in 1864. Professor Blight narrates the campaigns of 1864, including the Battles of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor, and the siege o...more
Professor Blight begins his lecture with a description of the sea change in Civil War scholarship heralded by the Social History revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. Along with a focus on the experience of the common solider, women, and African Americans, a central component of this shift in scholarly emphasis was an increased interest in the effects of the war on the Union and Confederate home fronts. After suggesting some of the ways in wh...more
In the closing decades of the 1800s, African Americans witnessed the end of Reconstruction, the Redemption of the white South, and increased threats to their political, economic, physical, and psychological well-being. Historians often refer to this era as the "nadir," the lowest point, in the post-Emancipation black experience. But, as Professor Holloway explains in this lecture, the oppressive realities of black life did not silence the ...more
