African American History to 1885 Spring 2016, MWF, 10:00am-10:50am Hellems, Room 245

Course Description This course will examine the lives of people of African descent in the North American British colo-nies/United States from the moment of settlement to the end of Reconstruction. Core themes will include African origins, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, slavery, and (the fraught filled) freedom of the immediate post-emancipation era. We will explore and analyze the social, cultural, political, econom-ic, and legal aspects of African Americans’ quotidian life but also their experiences during key mo-ments of national upheaval to include the American Revolution and the Civil War. This is a history course designed to engage interdisciplinary pedagogical forms including works of art, literature, music, and documentaries in addition to history texts. The reasons for this are twofold: first, these media offer different points of entry into history beyond the text and secondly, they enrich the learning experience as students gain and sharpen analytical and critical thinking skills.

Dr. Samanthis Smalls

Office: Hellems 333A

Office Hours: MWF—11:00am-12noon

Samanthis.Smalls@Colorado.edu

Required Text Deborah Gray White, Mia Bay, and Waldo E. Martin, Jr., eds. Freedom of My Mind: A History of Afri-can Americans with Documents, Volume One: to 1885. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2012.

Suggested Text Richard Marius. A Short Guide to Writing about History. New York: Longman, 2002. Other readings available in D2L.

Assignments Primary Source Document Analysis 10pts Primary Source Document Transcription 10pts Book Review 10pts Quizzes (3) 10pts ea. Midterm 15pts Final Paper 15pts Participation 10pts

Class Schedule

Class 1 [Mon, January 11] Review syllabus

Class 2 [Wed, January 13] Patrick Rael, “What Happened and Why? Helping Students

Read and Write Like Historians,” The History Teacher 39

(November 2005): 23-32. (D2L)

Class 3 [Fri, January 15] “Book Review” from UNC Writing Center (D2L)

Week 1

Week 2 Class 1 [Mon, January 18th] HOLIDAY, MLK Jr. Day Class 2 [Wed, January 20th] Walter Johnson, “On Agency,” special issue, Journal of Social History 37 (Fall 2003): 113-124. Class 3 [Fri, January 22nd] Kimberle Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence

Against Women of Color,” Stanford Law Review 47 (July 1991): 1241-1299. “Introduction for Students,” in Freedom on My Mind (xxvii-xxxii)

Week 3

Class 1 [Mon, January 25th] Chapter 1, From Africa to America Class 2 [Wed, January 27th] Chapter 1, Documents and Visual Resources Class 3 [Fri, January 29th] Supplementary Reading: Philip D. Morgan, “The Cultural Implications of the Atlantic Slave Trade:

African Regional Origins, American Destinations and New World Developments,” in “Routes to Slavery: Direction, Ethnicity and Mortality in the Transatlantic Slave Trade,” special issue, Slavery & Abolition 18 (April 1997): 122-145

DUE: Initial Pr imary Source Document Analysis Suggested Reading: Jennifer Morgan, Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery (Philadelphia:

University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004)

On Assignments Primary Source Document Analysis is a two-part assignment; only the final analysis will receive a grade. At the beginning of the semester you will select any primary docu-ment (relevant to the topic and era) and offer an assessment of the doc-ument. You will reassess the same document at the end of the semes-ter; the final effort will be graded. Primary Source Document Tran-scription will require the transcrip-tion of a primary source document, a manumission ledger, held at the Norlin library. While each person will be responsible for, and graded on, approximately 2-3 pages of transcription, the end product will be considered a collaborative effort. Book Review: you will select a book from the suggested readings list, read it, write a review of it, and post it on the class website. Book reviews will be a topic of classroom discussion. We will discuss book review content and format in class. Participation is weighted primarily by in-class participation. Articulat-ing your thoughts is instrumental to individual student development and useful to class debates and dis-cussions. Additionally, responses to book reviews will count toward the participation grade.

Week 5

Week 4

Marcus Rediker, The Slave Ship: A Human History (New York: Viking, 2007).

Stephanie Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora (Cambridge, MA: Har-vard University Press, 2007).

Vincent Brown, The Reaper’s Garden: Death and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer-sity Press, 2010).

Class 1 [Mon, February 1st] Chapter 2, African Slavery in North America, 1619-1739 Class 2 [Wed, February 3rd] Chapter 2, Documents and Visual Resources Class 3 [Fri, February 5th] Supplementary Reading: Ira Berlin, “From Creole to Afri-

can: Atlantic Creoles and the Origins of African American Society in Mainland North America,” William & Mary Quarterly 52 (April 1996): 251-244.

Suggested Reading: Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom

(London: W.W. Norton, 1975). Winthrop D. Jordan, White Over Black: American Attitudes

Toward the Negro (London: W.W. Norton, 1977). Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery: From the

Baroque to the Modern, 1492-1800 (London: Verso, 1997). Michael A. Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks: The

Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and An-tebellum South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994).

Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in America: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994).

Class 1 [Mon, February 8th] Chapter 3, African Americans in the Age of Revolution,

1740-1743 Class 2 [Wed, February 10th] Chapter 3, Documents and Visual Resources

On Assignments (cont.) Quizzes will comprise reading and lecture materials. The format will be short answer and multiple choice. Midterm will follow a similar format as quizzes. Final Paper will be take-home and ap-proximately 10-12 pages. The final pa-per is in lieu of a final exam. I will dis-cuss details at length as due dates draw near.

Week 6

Class 3 [Fri, February 12th] Supplementary Reading: Woody Holton, “Rebel Against

Rebel’: Enslaved Virginians and the Coming of the Ameri-can Revolution,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biog-raphy 105 (Spring 1997): 157-92.

Suggested Reading: David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Rev-

olution, 1770-1823 (Cornell University Press, 1975). Gary B. Nash, The Forgotten Fifth: African Americans in the

Age of Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006).

Douglas R. Egerton, Death or Liberty: African Americans and Revolutionary America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

Alan Gilbert, Black Patriots and Loyalists: Fighting for Eman-cipation in the War of Independence (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012).

Class 1 [Mon, February 15th] Chapter 4, Slavery and Freedom in the New Republic,

1743-1429 Class 2 [Wed, February 17th] Chapter 4, Documents and Visual Resources Class 3 [Fri, February 19th] Supplementary Reading: A Selection from Solomon

Northup, 12 Years a Slave (Electronic Edition), “Documenting the American South” (Chapel Hill: Univer-sity of North Carolina) http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/northup/northup.html

QUIZ #1 Suggested Reading: Gary B. Nash, Forging Freedom: The Formation of Philadel-

phia’s Black Community, 1720-1840 (Cambridge, MA: Har-vard University Press, 1991).

Matthew Mason, Slavery and Politics in the Early American Republic (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004).

Laura Edwards, The People and Their Peace: Legal Culture and the Transformation of Inequality in the Post-Revolutionary South (Chapel Hill: University of North Car-olina Press, 2009).

Course Guide You can access the HIST4437-001 course guide through Chinook, the CU Library online catalog. The course guide is an online directory to course specific resources constructed by CU-Boulder/Norlin Librarians. Please use the site for useful books, journals, his-torical newspapers, primary sources, websites, and citation aids.

Week 8

Week 9

Week 7

Class 1 [Mon, February 22nd] Reading #1 on Primary Sources. Poetry Readings (D2L) Class 2 [Wed, February 24th] Reading #2 on Primary Sources. DUE: First Group of Book Reviews (10) Class 3 [Fri, February 26th]

Class 1 [Mon, February 29th] Chapter 5, Black Life in the Slave South, 1420-1460 Class 2 [Wed, March 2nd] Chapter 5, Documents and Visual Resources Class 3 [Fri, March 4th] Supplementary Reading: Stephanie M.H. Camp, “The Pleasures of Resistance: Enslaved Women

and Body Politics in the Plantation South, 1810-1861,” Journal of Southern History 68 (August 2002): 533-572.

Suggested Reading: Eugene Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York: Random House, 1972). Peter Wood, Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1230 through the Stono Rebel-

lion (New York: W.W. Norton, 1974). Debra Grey White, Ar’n’t I a Woman?: Female Slaves in the Plantation South (New York: W.W. Nor-

ton, 1944). Sally Hadden, Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas (Cambridge, MA: Har-

vard University Press, 2001). Walter Johnson, Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market (Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press, 2001). Dylan Penningroth, The Claims of Kinfolk: African American Property and Community in the Nine-

teenth-Century South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003). Daina Ramey Berry, Swing the Sickle for the Harvest is Ripe: Gender and Slavery in Antebellum

Georgia (Urbana: University of Illinois, 2007).

Class 1 [Mon, March 7th] Chapter 6, The Northern Black Freedom Struggle and the Coming of the Civil War, 1430-1460 Class 2 [Wed, March 9th] Chapter 6, Documents and Visual Resources

Week 11—HOLIDAY, Spring Break

Week 12

Week 10

Class 3 [Fri, March 11th] Supplementary Reading: Joanna Brooks, “The Early American Public Sphere and the Emergence

of a Black Print Counterpublic,” William and Mary Quarterly 62 (January 2005): 67-92. Suggested Reading: Leon Litwack, North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790-1860 (Chicago: University of Chi-

cago Press, 1961). Jane G. Landers, Against the Odds: Free Blacks in the Slave Societies of the Americas (London:

Routledge, 1996). Leslie M. Harris, In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626-1863 (Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 2002).

Class 1 [Mon, March 14th] Chapter 7, Freedom Rising: The Civil War, 1461-1465 Class 2 [Wed, March 16th] Chapter 7, Documents and Visual Resources Class 3 [Fri, March 18th] Screen Movie: Glory (select scenes) QUIZ#2 Suggested Reading: Pamela Scully and Diana Paton, Gender and Slave Emancipation in the Atlantic World (Durham:

Duke University Press, 2005). Leslie A. Schwalm, A Hard Fight for We: Women’s Transition from Slavery to Freedom in South Car-

olina (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997). Thavolia Glymph, Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

[Mon, March 21st—Fri, March 25th]

Class 1 [Mon, March 28th] Chapter 4, Reconstruction: The Making & Unmaking of a Revolution, 1465-45 Class 2 [Wed, March 30th] Chapter 4, Documents and Visual Resources Class 3 [Fri, April 1st] Supplementary Reading: Elsa Barkley Brown, “Womanist Consciousness: Maggie Lena Walker

and the Independent Order of Saint Luke,” Signs 14 (1949): 610-633. Suggested Reading: W.E.B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880 (New York: Atheneum, 1935) C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974)

Week 14—Readings on Local History

Week 15

Week 13

Class 1 [Mon, April 4th] Selections from W.E.B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk (D2L) Class 2 [Wed, April 6th] Selections from Booker T. Washington’s Up From Slavery (D2L) Class 3 [Fri, April 8th] Screen Documentary clips on Du Bois & Washington

Class 1 [Mon, April 11th] Local History Reading #1: Dan Moos, “Recasting the West: Frontier Identity and African Ameri-

can Self-Publication,” in Outside America: Race, Ethnicity, and the Role of the American West in National Belonging (Lebanon, New Hampshire: Darthmouth College Press, 2005): 77-103.

DUE: Final Group of Book Reviews (10) Class 2 [Wed, April 13th] Local History Reading #2: Quintard Taylor, “African American Men in the American West, l524-

1990,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 569 (May 2000): 102-119. Class 3 [Fri, April 15th] Local History Reading #3: Sue Armitage, Theresa Banfield, and Sarah Jacobus, “Black Women and

Their Communities in Colorado,” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 6 (Summer 1977): 45-51. QUIZ#3 Suggested Reading: Nell Irvin Painter, Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas After Reconstruction (New York: Alfred A.

Knopf, 1977). John Ravage, Black Pioneers: Images of the Black Experience on the North American Frontier (Salt

Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1994). Qunitard Taylor, In Search of the Racial Frontier: African Americans in the American West, 1528-

1990 (New York: Norton, 1999).

Class 1 [Mon, April 18th] Review the Reviews, 10 Books Class 2 [Wed, April 20th] Review the Reviews, 10 Books

Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (New York: Harper & Row, 1944).

Julie Saville, The Work of Reconstruction: From Slave to Wage Laborer in South Carolina, 1860-1870

(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994). Tera Hunter, To ‘Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors After the Civil War

(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997).

Class 1 [Mon, April 25th] Review the Reviews, 10 Books Class 2 [Wed, April 27th] Review the Reviews, 10 Books Class 2 [Fri, April 29th] Last Day of Class Course Review

Week 16

Class 3 [Fri, April 22nd] Final Primary Source Analysis Due

Accommodation For Disabilities If you qualify for accommodations because of a disability, please submit to your professor a letter from Disability Services in a timely manner (for exam accommodations provide your letter at least one week prior to the exam) so that your needs can be addressed. Disability Services determines accommodations based on documented disabilities. Contact Disability Services at 303-492-4671 or by e-mail at dsinfo@colorado.edu. If you have a temporary medical condition or injury, see Temporary Injuries guidelines under the Quick Links at the Disability Services website and discuss your needs with your professor.

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