HIST 213 19th Century Black Activism for Abolition and Equality

This course explores free Black political organizing, from the American revolutionary era through Reconstruction. Students will conduct original research into African American activism that stretched from New York to California before and after the U.S. Civil War. We will explore the social networks and political institutions that 19th-century African Americans built to fight for civil rights, economic justice, and an end to chattel slavery. At the heart of the course is a digital humanities component that will involve students in researching the lives and ideas of individual Black activists. At the end of the course, we will contribute our collective research to the national website, Colored Conventions. While engaged in original historical research, students will also be reading exciting scholarship on the rise of free Black communities in the U.S. and the emergence of African American institutions (churches, schools, press, political organizations). We will delve into questions such as: how did free African Americans, from leadership to grassroots levels, organize for racial equality, abolition, and community empowerment? How did class structures and gender ideology shape the dynamics of Black organizing? What transnational relationships and diasporic identities did Black activists build in the protracted struggles for abolition and citizenship?