FAYETTEVILLE STATE UNIVERSITY College of Arts and Sciences Department of Government and History

DIANNE W. OYLER, Ph.D. TEACHING| Advising and Service | Research | Background | Links | Home

I. LOCATOR INFORMATION
 
 
 

II. COURSE DESCRIPTION:
 

This course will examine the history of African Americans in American society from 1619 to the present. Special attention will be devoted to the unique contributions of African Americans to the cultural, economic, intellectual, social, and technical development of the United States.
1. Unit I, will briefly examine the West African context of the first Africans, their cultural retentions, and the new African American culture that emerged from their interaction with European and other cultures in a new environment. It will explore the topics of the slave trade, the varieties of the slave experience, the acculturation or "seasoning" of Africans, the building of a culturally cohesive African American cultural community, and the changing character of American slavery will comprise much of the 17th and 18th century discussion of the African American experience.
2. Unit II, will examine the emergence of the abolitionist movement, the status of free blacks in the North and South, the Slave community, several manifestations of slavery in the antebellum South, and the back to Africa movement of the 1820s. It will devote special attention to African Americans' participation in the Civil War and Reconstruction. The course will next explore the deteriorating position of African Americans in postwar South and the nationalization of the race issue in the late 19th century.
3. Unit III will continue to look at nationalization, furthered by the migration from the South to the urban North and West in the 20th century. Special attention will be given to the problems of civil, political, and social rights for African Americans and the special significance of t the conflict between separatists and integrationists. The course will investigate the reasons for the flowering of art, literature, and ideas often associated with the term "Harlem Renaissance." Finally the course will explore the implications of the American economic and social changes for the status and opportunities afforded African Americans.

III. TEXTS:
 

Franklin, John Hope and Alfred A. Moss, Jr. From Slavery to Freedom. 7th Edition. New York: Alfred A. Knopf Company, 1994.

RESERVE READINGS:

Thornton, John. Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800, 1992.

Frazier, Thomas R. Afro-American History: Primary Sources. 2nd Edition, 1988.

HANDOUTS
 

Locator | Description | Texts | Objectives | Evaluation | Requirements | Strategies | Outline | References
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IV. BEHAVIORAL OBJECTIVES (and COMPETENCIES):
 
 

Upon completion of this course with a seventy percent proficiency a student will be able to analyze change and continuity overtime, organize historical evidence, and ask and answer critical questions about the past. The student will also be able to demonstrate knowledge of people and events across time, to be used as building blocks for critical interpretation and understanding of the past. In addition, a student will be able to identify the enduring themes of the historical experience and discuss history as a discipline. Moreover, the student will be able to demonstrate an understanding of the historical role of both common and diverse cultural traditions that constitute African civilizations. Finally, the student will be able to illustrate the cultural products that past societies have regarded as aesthetically pleasing and the ways in which they were produced.

STUDENT OUTCOMES: Students who complete this course with 70% proficiency, the student will

Demonstrate a familiarity with the work of historians and other social scientists in recreating the human story:

1. Describe the work of anthropologists, archaeologists, historians, etc. in uncovering the past;

2. Describe the methods and techniques historians use in historical reconstruction;

Demonstrate an understanding of the motivating forces behind African, American, and African American History:

1. Identify the cultural and philosophical ideals of early African societies like Egypt, Kush, Axum (Ethiopia), Zimbabwe, and the Sudanic Empires of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai;
2. Explain the origins and demise of great African kingdoms;
3. Explain the origins and overall effect of the Atlantic Slave trade;
4. Explain the origins and development of African American culture in the New world;
5. Explain the rise and development of African Americans within the United States;

Demonstrate an understanding of the individuals who were operative in and influential on African American history:

1. Describe the people who helped blacks come to the United States and evaluate the circumstances under which they came;
2. Identify and analyze the efforts of early benefactors of blacks who worked for their emancipation and elevation;
3. Evaluate the circumstances (wars, movements) and forces that proved pivotal in the advancement of blacks in the United States;
4. Describe the works of the people who worked in the best interest of African Americans and be able to distinguish them from those people who worked to the detriment of peoples of African descent.

V. EVALUATION CRITERIA/GRADING SCALE:
 

1. Grades will be based on three examinations, writing assignments, and class participation. Each exam will be based on the units of study immediately preceding it and will be written in a blue book which may be purchased in the book store. The class may determine the size of the blue book to be used.

NOTE: YOU SHOULD NEVER MISS A SCHEDULED EXAM. UNLESS THE ABSENCE IS EXCUSED WITH PROPER DOCUMENTATION, THE MAKE-UP EXAM GRADE WILL BE REDUCED BY ONE LETTER GRADE AS A PENALTY FOR ABSENCE. MAKE-UP EXAMS ARE AT THE SOLE DISCRETION OF THE INSTRUCTOR.

SPECIAL NOTE ON ACADEMIC HONESTY: Students should be aware that a university is a community of scholars committed to the discovery and dissemination of knowledge and truth. Without the freedom to investigate all materials, scrupulous honesty in reporting findings, and proper acknowledgment of credit, such a community can not survive. Students are expected to adhere to the highest traditions of scholarship. Any infractions of these traditions, such as plagiarism, are not tolerated. Though we do not anticipate any such occurrence, for the record, misrepresenting someone else's words or ideas as one's own, constitutes plagiarism. In cases where plagiarism occurs, the instructor has the right to penalize the student(s) as he or she thinks appropriate. One guide line holds that the first offence = failure of the assignment; the second offence = failure of the course.

Grades and their numerical equivalents are as follows:

2. INSTRUCTOR POLICIES
 
a. MAKE-UP WORK
1. EXAMS: Unless the absence is excused with proper documentation, the make-up exam grade with be reduced by one letter grade as a penalty for absence. Make-up exams are at the sole discretion of the instructor. Missed exams caused by an excused absence must be made up WITHIN ONE WEEK unless illness or emergency necessitates a longer absence from school.
2. Missed due date of the assignment. This applies to writing assignments--SUBTRACT ONE LETTER GRADE.
3. No make-up work will be accepted the last week of classes.
b. EXTRA CREDIT may be earned through cultural reaction papers turned in with the exam.

c. As a rule, I do not give an incomplete. If you choose not to complete the class please formally withdraw from it.

VI. COURSE REQUIREMENTS:

Assignments: Assignments for this class will include reading, writing, and special projects to include:
1. Film Review--Guide
2. Group Work--Textbook Evaluation Project--Guide
3. Current Events Notebook--Guide

Attendance and Punctuality: Students are responsible for material covered and assignments.

Class Participation: All students are expected to come to class prepared to discuss the assigned material, so it is important to complete all the assigned readings before coming to class. Any student may, at any time, be called upon to recite or to write a short essay on the assigned material. Short quizzes may be given on assigned materials at any time. Students are expected to understand the material, or at least have identified those items that they do not yet understand in order to ask question in class. The instructor will assume that students know the material and are prepared to discuss it. Students are responsible for all work assigned in this class, whether or not they are present. Assignments must be completed on time.

Students are expected to observe normal courtesy in class. They are expected to pay attention to the instructor, to take detailed notes, to refrain from personal conversations, and to avoid any other behavior which is disruptive and disturbing to others. A student who does not observe these courtesies may be asked to leave the room.

This course is designed to help improve your proficiency in note-taking, library skills, logical and analytical thinking and writing, and critical evaluation.

VII. TEACHING STRATEGIES
 

The mode of presentation for the course will be lecture/student discussion. There will be opportunities for cooperative learning. I encourage peer teaching and recommend students to work together through study groups. I want to emphasize the critical analysis of data--information you read and see on film/video and the communication of your ideas supported by facts. While these skills are important to the course work at hand, they are most important in your life's work where you read, listen, evaluate, articulate, communicate your understanding, ideas, and opinions on a daily basis. These activities will give you practice in these areas.

VIII. DISCUSSION/LECTURE TOPICS AND READING/WRITING ASSIGNMENT DUE DATES: MONTHLY CALENDARS TO FOLLOW
 
  

IX. REFERENCES

 
AFRICA

Curtin, Philip et al.,  African History (1978).

Curtin, Philip, ed. Africa Remembered

Holloway, Joseph, ed. Africanisms in African American Culture,

Nascimento, Abdiasdo, Africans in Brazil,

Olaniyan, Richard. African History and Culture (1982).

Oliver, Roland, ed. The Cambridge History of Africa, vol. 3:
     c. 1050 - c. 1600 (1977).

Rout, Leslie. African Experiences in Spanish America: 1502 to
     Present. (Cambridge, 1976).
 

WEST AFRICA

ENGLISH WEST INDIES

Dunn, Richard, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713, (1972).

AFRICA and the SLAVE TRADE

Curtin, Philip D., The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census, (1969).

Curtin, Philip. Africa Remembered

Davis, David Brion.  The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture,         (1966).

Galenson, David W., Traders, Planters, and Slaves: Market Behavior in Early English America, (1986).

Klein, Herbert. The Middle Passage, (1978).

Law, Robin. The Slave Coast of West Africa, 1550-1750: The Impact
     of the Atlantic Slave Trade on an African Society, (1991).

Littlefield, Daniel C. Rice and Slaves: Ethnicity and the Slave
     Trade in Colonial South Carolina, (1981).

Lovejoy, Paul, ed. Africans in Bondage: Studies in Slavery and the
     Slave Trade, (1986).

Manning, Patrick.

Rawley, James. The Transatlantic Slave Trade: A History, (1981).
 

COLONIAL AMERICA

General:

Berlin, Ira. "Time, Space, and the Evolution of Afro-American
     Society in British Mainland America," American Historical
     Review, 85 (1980), 44-78.

Chesapeake:
 
Breen, T.H. and Stephen Innes, "Myne Owne Ground": Race and Freedom
     on Virginia's Eastern Shore, 1640-1676, (1980).

Kulikoff, Allan. Tobacco and Slaves: The Development of Southernj
     Cultures in the Chesapeake, 1680-1800, (1986).

Morgan, Edmund S., American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal
     of Colonial Virginia, (1975).

Sobel, Mechal, The World They Made Together: Black and White Values
     in Eighteenth-Century Virginia, (1987).

South Carolina:

Wood, Peter H. Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina
     from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion, (1974).

North:

McManas, Edgar J. Black Bondage in the North, (1973).

New England:

Greene, Lorenzo, The Negro in Colonial New England, (1942).

Pierson, William, Black Yankees: The Development of an Afro-American Subculture in Eighteenth-Century New England, (1988).

AMERICAN REVOLUTION

Frey, Sylvia. Water From the Rock: Black Resistance in a Revolutionary Age, (1991).

Quarles, Benjamin. The Negro in the American Revolution, (1961).

EARLY REPUBLIC

Egerton, Douglas. Gabriel's Rebellion: The Virginia Slave Conspiracies of 1800 and 1802, (1993).

NATIONAL REPUBLIC

Davis, David Brion. The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution
     1770-1823, (1975).

George, Carol, V.R. Segregated Sabbaths: Richard Allen and the
     Emergence of Independent Black Churches, 1760-1840, (1973).

Nash, Gary. Forging Freedom: The Formation of Philadelphia's Black
     Community, 1720-1840, (1988).

Robinson, Donald L. Slavery in the Structure of American Politics,
     1765-1820, (1971).

White, Shane. Somewhat More Independent: The End of Slavery in
     New York City, 1770-1810, (1991).

ANTEBELLUM SOUTHERN SLAVE CULTURE

Blassingame, John, The Slave Community, (1979).

Chase, Judith Wragg, Afro-American Art and Craft (1971).

Epstein, Dena J., Sinful Tunes and Spirtuals, (1977).

Genovese, Eugene D., Roll, Jordon, Roll, (1974).

Joyner, Charles, Down by the Riverside, (1984).

Levine, Lawrence, Black Culture and Black Consciousness, (1977).

Raboteau, Albert J. Slave Religion, (1978).

Stuckey, Sterling, Slave Culture, (1987).

Wood, Peter, Black Majority, (1974).

ANTEBELLUM SOUTHERN SLAVE RESISTANCE

Aptheker, Herbert, American Negro Slave Revolts, (1943).

Oates, Stephen B., The Fires of Jubilee, (1975).

Starobin, Robert S., Denmark Vesey, (1970).

FREE PEOPLE OF COLOR

Berlin, Ira, Slaves Without Masters: The Free Negro in the
     Antebellum South, (1974).

Curry, Leonard P., The Free Black in Urban America, 1800-1850,
     (1981).

Litwark, Leon, North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States,
     1790-1860, (1961).

BLACK ABOLITIONISTS

Pease, William H. and Jane H. Pease, They Who Would Be Free:  Blacks' Search for Freedom, 1830-1861, (1974).

Quarles, Benjamin, Black Abolitionists, (1969).

THE SOUTH AND SLAVERY

Faust, Drew G., The Ideology of Slavery, (1981).

Thornton III, J.Mills, Politics and Power in a Slave Society, (1978).

THE NORTH AND SLAVERY

Berwanger, Eugene H., The Frontier Against Slavery, (1967).
 
CIVIL WAR

Cornish, Dudley, The Sable Arm, (1956).

Fields, Barbara Jeanne, Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground,
     (1985).

Quarles, Benjamin, The Negro in the Civil War, (1953).

RECONSTRUCTION

Foner, Eric, Nothing But Freedom, (1983).

Foner, Eric, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution,           (1988).

Rabinowitz, Howard, Race Relations in the Urban South, 1865-1890,      (1977).

Rose, Willie Lee, Rehearsal for Reconstruction, (1964).

LATE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICA

Woodward, C. Vann, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, (2nd ed., 1968).

Williamson, Joel, A Rage for Order, (1986).

Meier, August, Negro Thought in America, 1880-1915, (1963).

PROGRESSIVE ERA, 1900-1914

Fox, Stephen R. Fox, The Guardian of Boston: William Monroe Trotter, (1971).

GREAT MIGRATION

Grossman, James R., Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and
     the Great Migration, (1989).

Tuttle, Jr., William M., Race Riot: Chicago in the Red Summer of  1919, (1970).

HARLEM RENAISSANCE

Anderson, Jervis, This Was Harlem, 1900-1950, (1982).

Huggins, Nathan, Harlem Renaissance, (1971).

Hull, Gloria T., Color, Sex, and Poetry: Three Women Writers of the
     Harlem Renaissance, (1987).

Cronin, David, Black Moses, (1962).

Vincent, Theodore, Black Power and the Garvey Movement, (1970).

GREAT DEPRESSION

Carter, Dan T., Scottsboro, (1969).

NEW DEAL

Sitkoff, Harvard, A New Deal for Blacks, (1985).

POSTWAR MIGRATION

Lemann, Nicholas, The Promised Land, (1991).

VIETNAM

Terry, Wallace, Bloods, (1984).

CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

Branch, Taylor, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years,
     1954-1963, (1988).

Feagin, Joe R. and Harlan Hahn, Ghetto Revolts, (1973).

Garrow, David, Bearing the Cross, (1986).

Sitkoff, Harvard, The Struggle for Black Equality, (1981).

Weisbrot, Robert, Freedom Bound, (1990).