Professor Judith Stein Office Hours: Tu 2-4 pm and by appt. History 75900 Room 5114.09 Tu4:15-6:15 817-8434 [email protected]

Readings in African American History: 1863 to the Present

This course has two objectives. First, we will explore the major historical issues and methods in post-emancipation African-American history. We will examine the recent literature on the following topics: origins of Jim Crow, migration from South to North, class structure and ideology, the labor movement, nationalism, the New Deal, civil rights movement, "black power," and what is often called the "post-civil rights" world. Second, we will analyze the assumptions and methods underlying such work. How do historians handle problems of agency and periodization? What factors shape the agenda of African-American history? How do historians integrate the history of African- Americans with that of the United States? What assumptions shape judgments about change and continuity, which have been central in some of the historical literature? Has "postmodernism" affected the writing of African-American history?

All students will be responsible for the "core assignment," which will be the subject of class discussions. Most of the supplementary materials is not on reserve, but it is readily available Each student will be responsible, in addition, to present questions in advance for one session of the colloquium. Students will also write a short historiographical essay of 6-8 pages on one of the other topics, due May 1. This essay should use at least 2 other books. All students should see me early in the semester to speak about this essay. Please submit a brief statement about your plans by Feb. 26 or before. There will be a written exercise at the end of the term involving major issues in African-American history or a paper based upon primary sources.

January 29 Introduction

February 5 Reconstruction

Core: Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 Steven Hahn, A Nation Under Our Feet, 163-313

Supplementary: James Oakes, Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865 Barbara J. Fields, "Ideology and Race in America History, in Region, Race, and Reconstruction, J. Morgan Kousser and James M. McPherson eds., 143-77. Leslie A. Schwalm, A Hard Fight for We: Women's Transition from Slavery to Freedom in South Carolina Michael Wayne, The Reshaping of Plantation Society: The Natchez District, 1860-1880 2

Richard Zuczek, State of Rebellion: Reconstruction in South Carolina Julie Saville, The Work of Reconstruction: From Slave to Wage Labor in South Carolina David Montgomery, Beyond Equality: Labor and the Radical Republicans, 1862- 1872 Iver Bernstein, The New York City Draft Riots: Their Significance for American Society and Politics in the Age of the Civil War Leon Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery Harold Woodman, "Sequel to Slavery: The New History Views the Post-Bellum South," Journal of Southern History 43 (1977), 523-54. Steven Hahn, "Class and State in Postemancipation Societies: Southern Planters in Comparative Perspective," American Historical Review, 95 (Sept. 1990), 75-98 Michael Fitzgerald, Splendid Failure: Postwar Reconstruction in the American South

Feb. 12 Black Farmers (GC closed; in my apartment)

Theodore Rosengarten, All God’s Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw

Supplementary Gavin Wright, Old South, New South: Revolutions in the Southern Economy Since the Civil War

February 19 The Origins of Segregation and Disfranchisement Core: (Books on Reserve; articles JSTOR or equivalent) John Cell, The Highest Stage of White Supremacy: The Origins of Segregation in South Africa and the American South, pp. 82-170; J. Morgan Kousser, Shaping of Southern Politics: Suffrage Restriction and the Establishment of the One-Party South, 1880-1910, pp. 1-34, 224-65. Lawrence Goodwyn, "Populist Dreams and Negro Rights: East Texas as a Case Study, American Historical Review 76 (1971), 1435-1456. Barbara J. Fields, “Origins of the New South and the Negro Question,” Journal of Southern History 67 (Nov. 2001), 811-26

Supplementary: Edward Ayres, The Promise of the New South, Ch. 6, 10 C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow Stanley Greenberg, Race and State in Capitalist Development Howard N. Rabinowitz, Race Relations in the Urban South, 1865-1890. Joseph H. Cartwright, The Triumph of Jim Crow: Tennessee Race Relations in the 1880s. Joel Williamson, The Crucible of Race Lawrence Goodwyn, The Populist Moment, Ch. 4, 5, pp. 187-212. Gregory Mixon. The Atlanta Riot: Race, Class, and Violence in a New South City 3

February 26 Black Workers in Age of Jim Crow

Core: Brian Kelly, Race, Class, and Power in the Alabama Coalfields, 1908-21

Supplementary: Eric Arnesen, Waterfront Workers in New Orleans Peter Rachleff, Black Labor in Richmond, 1865-1890 James Green, "The Brotherhood of Timber Workers 1910-1913: A Radical Response to Industrial Capitalism in the Southern U.S.A.," Past and Present 60 (Aug. 1973), 161-200. Eric Arnesen, "Following the Color Line of Labor: Black Workers and the Labor Movement before 1930,” Radical History Review 55 (1993), pp. 53-87. Joe Trotter, Coal, Class, and Color: Blacks in Southern West Virginia, 1915-32. David A. Corbin, Life, Work, and Rebellion in the Coal Fields: The Southern West Virginia Miners, 1880-1922, esp. ch. "Class Over Caste." Dan Letwin, The Challenge of Interracial Unionism: Alabama Coal Miners, 1878-1923 Robert H. Zieger, For Jobs and Freedom: Race and Labor in America Since 1865 Tera Hunter, To 'Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women's Lives and Labors after the Civil War

Mar. 5 Black Intellectuals

Core: Adolph Reed, Jr. W. E. B. Du Bois and the American Political Thought: Fabianism and the Color Line, 3-125 Kevin Gaines, Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics, and Culture in the Twentieth Century, 1-99

Supplementary: August Meier, Negro Thought in America, 1877-1915 Louis Harlan, Booker T. Washington, 2 vols. Alfred A. Moss, Jr. The American Negro Academy: Voice of the Talented Tenth Wilson Moses, The Golden Age of Black Nationalism, 1850-1925 Elliot Rudwick, W. E. B. Du Bois: Propagandist of the Negro Protest Movement. Arnold Rampersad, The Art and Imagination of W. E. B. Du Bois David Levering Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919 James Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South

Mar. 12 African-American Social Movements and the Great Migration

Core: 4

Judith Stein, The World of Marcus Garvey

Supplementary; Steven A. Reich, “Soldiers of Democracy: Black Texans and the Fight for Citizenship, 1917-1921,” Journal of American History, 82 (Mar. 1996), 1478-1504. Rick Halpern, “Race, Ethnicity, and Union in the Chicago Stockyards, 1917-1922,” International Review of Social History 37 (1992), 25-58 Stephen Norwood, “Bogalusa Burning: The War Against Biracial Unionism in the Deep South, 1919” Journal of Southern History 58 (Aug 1997), 591-628 Winston James, Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia Kimberley L. Phillips, Alabama North: African-American Migrants, Community, and Working Class Activism in Cleveland, 1915-45 James R. Barrett, Work and Community in the Jungle, esp. pp. 188-280. Joe Trotter, Migration in Historical Perspective Peter Gottlieb, Making Their Own Way, pp. 1-62 Elliot Rudwick, Race Riot at East St. Louis, July 2, 1917. Robert Higgs, "The Boll Weevil, the Cotton Economy, and Black Migration, 1910-1930," Agricultural History 50 (1976), 335-50. Kimberley L. Phillips, Alabama North: African-American Migrants, Community, and Working Class Activism in Cleveland, 1915-45 James Grossman, Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners and the Great Migration. George Hutchinson, Harlem Renaissance in Black and White Arnold Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes, Vol. 1 Wayne F. Cooper, Claude McKay, Rebel Sojourner in the Harlem Renaissance

Mar 19 New Deal

Core: Harvard Sitkoff, A New Deal for Blacks Beth Tompkins Bates, “A New Crowd Challenges the Agenda of the Old Guard in the NAACP, 1933-1941,” American Historical Review 102 (Apr. 1997), 340- 77

Supplementary: Jonathan Scott Holloway, Confronting the Veil: Abram Harris Jr., E. Franklin Frazier, and Ralph Bunche, 1919-1941 Patricia Sullivan, Days of Hope: Race and Democracy in the New Deal Era (1996) Rayford W. Logan, ed., What the Negro Wants (1944) Walter Jackson, Gunnar Myrdal and America’s Consicence: Social Engineering and Racial Liberalism, 1938-1987 Robin D. G. Kelley, "We Are Not What We Seem": Rethinking Black Working- Class Opposition in the Jim Crow South," Journal of American History (1993), pp. 75-112. Horace R. Cayton and George S. Mitchell, Black Workers and the New Unions. 5

William H. Harris, Keeping the Faith: A. Philip Randolph, Milton P. Webster, and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, 1925-37 Nancy J. Weiss, Farewell to the Party of Lincoln: Black Politics in the Age of FDR August Meier and Elliot Rudwick, Black Detroit and the Rise of the UAW Mark Naison, Communists in Harlem During the Great Depression Robin Kelley, Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression Mark Solomon, The Cry was Unity: Communists and African Americans, 1917- 1936 Cheryl Greenberg, “Or Does it Explode?”: Black Harlem in the Great Depression Articles by Honey, Halperin, Stein in Organized Labor in the Twentieth-Century South, Robert Zieger, ed. John Kirby, Black Americans and the Roosevelt Era: Liberalism and Race. Ralph Bunche, The Political Status of the Negro in the Age of FDR Beth Bates, Pullman Porters and the Rise of Protest Politics in Black America, 1925-1945 Barbara Dianne Savage, Broadcasting Freedom: Radio, War, and the Politics of Race, 1938-1948 Eric Arnesen, “No ‘Graver Danger’: Black Anticommunism, the Communist Party, and the Race Question” and responses, Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 3, No.4 (winter, 2006), 13-52.

Apr. 9 Political Economy of Civil Rights Movement

Core: Bruce Schulman, From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt: Federal Policy, Economic Development, and the Transformation of the South, 1938-1980

Supplementary:

James C. Cobb, Industrialization and Southern Society, 1877-1984. James C. Cobb, The Selling of the South Robert J. Newman, Growth in the American South: Changing Regional Employment and Wage Patterns in the 1960s and 1970s. John Cogan, "The Decline of Black Teenage Employment: 1950-1970," American Economic Review 72 (1982), 621-38

Apr. 16 Racial Politics and the Brown Decision

Core Michael J. Klarman, Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Movement

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Supp. Steve Lawson, ed., To Secure These Rights: The Report of President Harry S. Truman’s Committee on Civil Rights James T. Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy Risa Goluboff, The Lost Promise of Civil Rights Genna Rae McNeil, Groundwork: Charles Hamilton Houston and the Struggle for Civil Rights Mark Tushnet, Making Civil Rights Law: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court, 1936-1961

Apr 23 Civil Rights Movement

Core: John Dittmer, Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi

Supplementary: Jack Bloom, Intro Class, Race, and the Civil Rights Movement Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening in the 1960s Adam Fairclough, To Redeem the Soul of America: The Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Martin Luther King, Jr. David Garrow, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference David Garrow, Protest at Selma Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-1963 Taylor Branch, Pillar in the Fires: America in the Kings Years, 1963-1965 Charles M. Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle. James C. Cobb, The Most Southern Place on Earth: The Mississippi Delta and the Roots of Regional Identity, chs. 9-11. August Meier and Elliot Rudwick, CORE: A Study of Civil Rights Movement Charles W. Eagles, ed., The Civil Rights Movement in America. J. Mills Thornton, II, Dividing Lines: Municipal Politics and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Montgomery, Birmingham, and Selma Glenn Eskew, But for Birmingham Elizabeth Jacoway and David R. Colburn, eds, Southern Businessmen and Desegregation. William Chafe, Civility and Civil Rights (Study of Greensboro, NC) Robert Norrell, Reaping the Whirlwind ( Tuskegee, Ala.) Robert Colburn, Racial Change and Continuity ( St. Augustine, Flor.) Timothy Tyson, Radio Free Dixie: Robert Williams and the Origins of Black Power

April 30 The State Responds

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Core: Hugh Graham, The Civil Rights Era, 1960-72

Supplementary: John F. Brauer, John F. Kennedy and the Second Reconstruction Ronald P. Formisano, Boston Against Busing: Race, Class, and Ethnicity in the 1960s and 1970s. John David Skrentny, The Ironies of Affirmative Action: Politics, Culture, and Justice in America Thomas and Mary Edsall, Chain Reaction Dan Carter, The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics F. Ray Marshall et al., Unemployment Discrimination: The Impact of Legal and Administrative Remedies. James P. Smith and Finis R. Welch, "Black Economic Progress After Myrdal," Journal of Economic Literature XXVII (June, 1989), pp. 521-22 Drew S. Days, II, "Fullilove," The Yale Law Journal 96 (Jan. 1987), pp. 453-85. John J. Donohue, II and James Heckman, "Continuous Versus Episodic Change: The Impact of Civil Rights Policy on the Economic Status of Blacks," Journal of Economic Literature XXIX (Dec. 1991) Hugh Davis Graham, Collision Course: the Strange Convergence of Affirmative Action and Immigration Policy in America John D. Skrentny, The Ironies of Affirmative Action: Politics Culture and Justice in America Paul D. Moreno,From Direct Action to Affirmative Action: Fair Employment Law and Policy in America 1933-1972

May 7 War on Poverty, Great Society and Blacks

Core: Kent Germany, New Orleans after the Promises: Poverty, Citizenship, and the Search for the Great Society Margaret Weir, Politics and Jobs, Ch. 3 Robert Bussel, “A Trade Union Oriented War on the Slums”: Harold Gibbons, Ernest Calloway and the St. Louis Teamsters in the 1960s,” Labor History, 44:1, 49-67

Supplementary: Clarence Lang, Grassroots at the Gateway: Class Politics and the Black Freedom Struggle in St. Louis, 1936-75 Guian A. McKee, The Problem of Jobs: Liberalism, Race and Deindustrialization in Philadelphia Trace K. Meyer, Civil Rights in the Gateway to the South: Louisville, Kentucky, 1945-1980 Kenneth Jolly, Black Liberation in the Midwest: The Struggle in St. Louis, Missouri, 1964-1970 8

May14 Black Power

Core:

Adolph Reed, “The Allure of Malcolm X and the Changing Character of Black Politics ,” from Joe Wood, Malcolm X in Our Own Image. Dean W. Robinson, Black Nationalism in American Politics and Thought, ch 4-6 Chris Rhomburg, No There, There: Race, Class, and Political Community in Oakland, chs 6-8

Supp. William Van Deburg, New Day in Babylon: the Black Power Movement and American Culture, 1965-1975 Robert Allen, Black Awakening in Capitalist America Stokley Carmichael and Charles Hamilton, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation Harold Cruse, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual James Forman, The Making of Black Revolutionaries Julius Lester, Look Out Whitey! Black Power’s Gon’ Get Your Mama Eldridge Cleaver, Soul on Ice Hugh Pearson, The Shadow of the Panther: Huey Newton and the Price of Black Power in America Bruce Perry, Malcolm X: The Life of a Man who Changed Black America Peter Goldman, The Death and Life of Malcolm X Timothy Tyson, Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Riots of Black Power Robert O. Self, American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland Adolph Reed, The Jesse Jackson Phenomenon Matthew Countrymen, Up South: Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia Manning Marable, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention Devin Fergus, Liberalism, Black Power and the Making of American Politics, 1965-1980