HIST 405-01, African Americans and the Civil War and Reconstruction, Spring 2008

Abstract

“The most dramatic episode in American history,” W. E. B. Du Bois wrote, was the emancipation of the nation’s four million African American slaves. This course will examine the African American experience in the southern United States during the Civil War and Reconstruction era. Students will read primary and secondary sources that demonstrate the central role African American men and women played in shaping the issues and debates that defined this era in American history, as well as the social and cultural processes that took place among African Americans during the transition from slavery to freedom. As a result, while the political divisions and military struggle between the North and South are important during this period, emphasis will be placed on the daily lives of freedpeople. Course topics include antebellum slave life and slave resistance, the emancipation process, competing views of freedom, black labor and politics, and race, class, and gender relations in African American communities after the Civil War.