The Civil Rights Movement
History 498
Fall 2009

Professor: Steve Estes
Office: Stevenson 2070D
Phone: 707.664.2424
Office Hours: M: 9:30-10:00 a.m.; W 2-2:30 p.m.; Th 1-2:30 p.m.
Class Meets: 8:00 a.m. - 11:40 a.m. Thursdays

Course Objectives:
This course is intended to give a broad overview of civil rights history and historiography and to encourage active documentation and participation in current struggles for social justice. The course focuses on the changes in race relations wrought by the civil rights movement of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. We begin our examination of the modern civil rights movement with a comparison of several scholarly overviews that will ground us in the chronology of the struggle. The remainder of the course will be a thematic and loosely chronological journey through the various stages of the movement for racial equality from the 1950s to the 1970s. We will conclude with a look at race relations and activism today. Throughout the course, we will be working on the craft of research and the art of writing. By the end of the semester we will not only have a better understanding of what other scholars have said about the civil rights movement, we will also have contributed our own original efforts at chronicling the history of the struggle.

Texts:
Kevin Boyle, Arc of Justice
Mike Ezra, Muhammad Ali
Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father
James T. Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education
Gene Roberts & Hank Klibanoff, The Race Beat
Harvard Sitkoff, The Struggle for Black Equality
Jason Sokol, There Goes My Everything

Course Requirements:
Classroom Participation & Reading: As an advanced history seminar, meeting once a week on Thursday mornings (8:00 am - 11:40 am), this course requires that students keep up with the reading and actively participate in class discussions. At the beginning of the term students will choose one week to read both the required and optional readings so that they can lead the discussion for half of the allotted class time. (30% of final grade) You must come to consult with me the week before you lead the discussion.

Papers: There are five book reviews in this class and one research paper. The reviews are simply one-page, single-spaced book reviews in the style of the American Historical Review or another professional historical journal. Half of you will be turning in book reviews each week in a random assignment at the beginning of the semester. The term paper, dealing with any aspect of the civil rights movement, is 15-20 pages in length, and it will be based on primary and secondary sources. Students will give a 5-7 minute presentation of their research at the end of the semester. (Book Reviews: 10% each for a total of 50% of final grade; Term Paper: 30% of final grade—including grades on rough drafts and on the 10-minute research presentation at the end of the semester.)

Course Schedule

Week I: Introduction 8.27
Required Reading: None
Part 1: Student Introductions & Discussion of Reviews / Research Topics
Part 2: View & Discuss Spike Lee, 4 Little Girls

Week II: Synthesis & Overview (Part 1) 9.03
Required Reading: Harvard Sitkoff, The Struggle for Black Equality (First half)
William Chafe, “‘The Gods Bring Threads to Webs Begun’: African American Life in the Jim Crow South” Journal of American History (March 2000): 1531-51. (Reserve)
Part 1: Discuss Jim Crow and the Beginnings of the Freedom Struggle
Part 2: View & Discuss Eyes on the Prize (Volume 1)

Week III: Synthesis & Overview (Part 2) 9.10
Required Reading: Harvard Sitkoff, The Struggle for Black Equality (Second half)
Charles Eagles, “Toward New Histories of the Civil Rights Movement” Journal of Southern History (November 2000): 815-848.
Part 1: Student-led Discussion and Reviews
Part 2: View & Discuss Eyes on the Prize (Volume 3)

Week IV: Before the Movement? 9.17
Required Reading: Kevin Boyle, Arc of Justice
Part 1: Student-led Discussion and Reviews
Part 2: Discussion (Jim Crow North and South)

Week V: The Long Civil Rights Movement 9.24
Required Reading: Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past” Journal of American History (March 2005): 1233-1263; Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua and Clarence Lang, “The ‘Long Movement’ as Vampire: Temporal and Spatial Fallacies in Recent Black Freedom Studies” Journal of African American History (March 2007): 265-288.
Part 1: Student-led Discussion and Reviews
Part 2: Debate (The “Long” or “Short” Civil Rights Movement)

Week VI: Civil Rights & the Law 10.01
Required Reading: James T. Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education (Chapters 1-5, 8-10) & Cass Sunstein, “Did Brown Matter?” The New Yorker May 3, 2004: 102-106.
Part 1: Student-Led Discussion & Reviews
Part 2: View & Discuss Eyes On the Prize (Volume 2)

Week VII: Women Warriors 10.8
Required Writing: Research Proposal (1-page on thesis and sources)
Required Reading: Betty Collier-Thomas, Sisters in the Struggle, 1-8, 59-92 (On Reserve); Christina Greene, “What’s Sex Got to Do With It?: Gender and the New Black Freedom Movement Scholarship” Feminist Studies (March 2006): 163-183.
You should also read your classmates’ proposals.
Part 1: Student-led Discussion & Reviews
Part 2: Discussion of Paper Proposals

Week VIII: (Research Week) 10.15
No Class

Week IX: The Media and the Movement 10.22
Required Reading: Roberts and Klibanoff, The Race Beat, Chapters 1-4, 8, 12, 15-16, 18-21, 23
Part 1: Student-led Discussion & Reviews
Part 2: Discussion of the “Liberal Media Bias”

Week X: White Rights? 10.29
Required Reading: Sokol, There Goes My Everything, Intro, Chapters 2, 4, 5, and 6
Part 1: Student-led Discussion & Reviews
Part 2: Video Clip In the Heat of the Night or Ghosts of Mississippi

Week XI: The Greatest 11.05
Required Reading: Ezra, Muhammad Ali, ix-66, 80-163, 175-197
Part 1: Student-led Discussion & Reviews
Part 2: Video Clip: When We Were Kings

Week XII: Hip Hop America 11.12
Required Writing: Draft of research paper introduction (two pages)
Required Reading: Robin Kelly, “Kickin’ Reality, Kickin’ Ballistics: ‘Gangsta rap’ and Post-Industrial Los Angeles” in Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class (New York: The Free Press, 1994) [On Reserve]; Derrick P. Alridge, “From Civil Rights to Hip Hop: Toward a Nexus of Ideals,” Journal of African American History (Summer 2005): 226-252.
Required Listening: Bring in audio clip and lyrics from a “political” hip hop song.
Part 1: Student-led Discussion & Reviews
Part 2: Audio Clips (“Political” Hip Hop)

Week XIII: The “Post-Civil Rights” Era11.19
Required Reading: Obama, Dreams from My Father, excerpts
Part 1: Student-led Discussion & Reviews
Part 2: Video Clip, Obama “A More Perfect Union” Speech (March 18, 2008)

Week XIV: Thanksgiving Break 11.26
No Class

Week XV: The Imperfect Storm 12.03
Required Viewing: Spike Lee, When the Levees Broke (Part 1)
Part 1: View the film in class.
Part 2: Student-led Discussion & Reviews

Week XVI: Student Presentations 12.10
Required Writing: Research Paper Due
Part 1: Student Presentations

Final Exam Complete Student Presentations 12.17 (8:00 am – 9:50 am)
Part 1: Complete Student Presentations