History 361-01

African-American History, 1619-1865

Fall 2006

Prof. Seth Cotlar

Office Phone: 370-6297

E-mail: scotlar@willamette.edu

Office Hours: T 2:30-3:30, F 1:00-2:00, and by appointment

Course Description: This course examines the experience of African Americans in the United States from 1619 to the end of the Civil War. Course topics will include the Atlantic Slave Trade, the relationship between slavery and racism, the evolution of slavery and African-American culture in the various regions of the United States, patterns of slave resistance and accommodation, and the African-American role in the abolitionist movement and the Civil War.

Teaching Method: Discussion with occasional short lectures to provide context.

Attendance Policy: Because the success of seminars depend largely upon the participation of the students, attendance is mandatory. One absence will be overlooked with no questions asked, but after that each absence will result in a deduction from the participation grade.

Plagiarism Policy: Students are expected to do their own work and to provide proper attribution when using someone else’s words or ideas. The instructor will rigorously enforce the university’s strict policy regarding academic dishonesty. Plagiarism on any assignment will result in an automatic ‘F’ for the course.

Evaluation: Each student will complete the following assignments:

--2000 word analytical essay 6-8 pages due 10/12 (15%)

--2000 word source-based interpretive essay, 6-8 pages due 11/21(20%)

--3000 word take-home final essay exam due 12/11 (25%)

--8 short, informal response papers due throughout the semester (15%)

--contribute to class conversation (25%)

Definitions:

--I will distribute the prompt for the analytical essay assignment two weeks before it is due. This will be a “standard” history paper where you will draw material from the course readings in order to develop an argument about the nature and history of American slavery. More detail to follow.

--Each student will choose their own topic (in consultation with me) for the source-based interpretive essay. Over the course of the semester we will have five “source days” where we will discuss five different types of sources that historians have used in their efforts to recover the experiences and voices of enslaved people. For your paper you will focus on one of these source types. You will first find a body of primary-sources sufficient to sustain a 2000 word analysis of some aspect of African-American History. Then you will find a few secondary sources that can help you interpret those sources and link them up to some of the broader themes of the course. This paper should conclude with some reflections on the interpretive advantages and limitations of your chosen source-type.

--The response papers should be free-form (yet thoughtful) responses to the reading. They should be no less than one single-spaced page. Think of them as your way of setting the agenda for class discussion by letting me know what you think is interesting, problematic, or important about the reading. Sometimes I will provide a specific prompt for these responses and sometimes it will be up to you to choose your focus. Despite the informal nature of the assignment, these responses should not just be your gut reactions (i.e. "this book was boring" or "this book was great"). I want you to mix your labor with these texts, exhibit your original insights, and develop one or two insights as fully as you can. Your responses should first summarize the central argument of the reading(s) and scrutinize the sorts of sources the author used to make that argument. Then they should go on to put forward critical interpretations of the readings, ask questions, make connections to other readings for the course, or do anything else which reveals a deep engagement with the readings. Note: memos are due via-e-mail by 9am the morning of class so that I have time to read them before our discussion.

-- You may contribute to class conversation in a number of ways besides being an active participant (as both a listener and a speaker) in class discussions. We will be doing group work frequently in this class, and your participation in those small group discussions will be an important way in which you can contribute to the learning of your fellow students. On days when you haven’t already reflected on the reading in the form of a response paper, it is a good idea to come to class with a question or comment in mind that you think would lead to a good conversation. I will start each class by asking if anyone has something they'd like to start us off with and you should take advantage of this opportunity. Finally, we will have a class listserv that I will be using primarily for administrative purposes, but which you should feel free to use as a discussion board.

Required Books:

[All books can be purchased at the Willamette Bookstore.]

1) Roger Wilkins, Jefferson’s Pillow

2) Henry Louis Gates, Jr., ed, The Classic Slave Narratives

3) Ira Berlin, Generations of Captivity

4) David Cecelski, The Waterman’s Song

5) Walter Johnson, Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market

6) Sharla Fett, Working Cures

All other readings (marked with an R) are on electronic reserve in the library. I recommend that you print these out far ahead of time in order to avoid any possible complications. [Note: each reserve reading is listed under the author’s name and a shortened title, i.e. Huggins—Deforming Mirror.]

Schedule of Class Meetings

T Aug 29 Introduction to the class.

Unit 1: The Relationship between American History and African-American History

TH 8/31

Reading: 1) Nathan Irvin Huggins, "The Deforming Mirror of Truth," in Black Odyssey. (New York: Vintage, 1990), xi-lxx. (R)

2) Roger Wilkins, Jefferson's Pillow, Prologue and Introduction.

Additional assignment for this unit: View The Patriot sometime before class on TH 9/7.

T 9/5

Reading: 1) Wilkins, 9-111

TH 9/7 **Response paper due in class for groups A & B: Write a 500 word review of The Patriot analyzing the film’s presentation of the relationship between the American Revolution, slavery, and freedom.

Reading: 1) Wilkins, 112-147

Unit 2: Slavery and the evolution of African-American cultures

T 9/12 What is Slavery?

Reading: 1) Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) in Gates, ed., The Classic Slave Narratives, 339-436. (source day #1: slave narratives)

TH 9/14 **response due from Groups A & B linking this reading to Douglass's Narrative

Reading: 1) Ira Berlin, Generations of Captivity, 2-49.

T 9/19 **response due from Group A linking source material with interpretations from Berlin's text

Reading: 1) Berlin, 53-96

2) Read brief essay on runaway slave advertisements at http://www.hudsonvalley.org/runaway/essay.htm

3) Use the Early American Newspaper Database to read a selection of at least 15 runaway slave advertisements from before the year 1783. (The link to this database is at http://library.willamette.edu/resources/databases/primary/) Source day #2: Runaway slave advertisements)

TH 9/21

Reading: 1) Berlin, 99-157.

2) Jill Lepore, “The Tightening Vise of Slavery,” in Slavery in New York (2005), 58-89. (R)

T 9/26 **response due from Group B linking source material with interpretations from Berlin's text

Reading: 1) Berlin, 161-270.

2) excerpts from planters’ letters and diaries (Source day #3: slaveholders’ writings)

TH 9/28 **response due from group A linking today’s reading to the Berlin book

Reading: 1) David Cecelski, The Waterman's Song, xi-xx, 3-56

T 10/3 **response due from group B linking today’s reading to the Berlin book

Reading: 1) Cecelski, 57-151

TH 10/5

Reading: 1) Cecelski, 153-212

2) Vincent Harding, “Soldiers of God’s Wrath,” 343-356. (R)

Unit 3: The Changing Meaning and Function of Race in American History

T 10/10 What is race? How do we think about the role of race in American History?

Reading: 1) Spend some time at http://www.pbs.org/race/001_WhatIsRace/001_00-home.htm.

2) Thomas C. Holt, "Explaining Racism in American History," in Imagined Histories (1998), 107-119. (R)

TH 10/12 **2000-word analytical essay due in class.

In-class viewing of Wonders of the African World: The Slave Kingdoms.

T 10/17 The relationship between race and slavery in early America

Reading: 1) Winthrop Jordan, The White Man’s Burden, 26-54. (R)

2) Edmund Morgan, American Slavery American Freedom, 295-337. (R)

TH 10/19 Race, and the psychology of the master/slave relationship--Debating the significance and meaning of Paternalism in the slave south

**response due from Groups A & B contrasting the interpretations in these three readings

Reading: 1) Eugene Genovese, Roll Jordan Roll (1972), 3-25. (R)

2) George Fredrickson, Excerpts from The Arrogance of Race (1988), 15-25. (R)

3) Nell Irvin Painter, “Soul Murder and Slavery: Toward a Fully Loaded Cost Accounting,” in Linda Kerber, et. al., eds. U.S. History as Women’s History, (1995), 125-146. (R)

T 10/24 ** response due from Group A linking this reading to any or all of the other readings from this unit on paternalism and race.

Reading: 1) Walter Johnson, Soul by Soul (1999), 1-77

TH 10/26

Reading: 1) Johnson, 78-134

T 10/31 **response due from Group B linking this reading to any or all of the other readings from this unit on paternalism and race.

Reading: 1) Johnson, 135-220

Unit 4: Unearthing and Interpreting Nineteenth-Century African-American voices

TH 11/2 Slave community and day to day resistance.

Reading: 1) Fett, ix-x, 1-35

2) Excerpts from WPA interviews with ex-slaves. (Source day #4: WPA slave narratives)

T 11/7 **response paper from Group A linking this reading to any other reading from the course so far.

Reading: 1) Fett, 36-108

TH 11/9 ** response paper from Group B linking this reading to any other reading from the course so far.

Reading: 1) Fett, 111-200.

T 11/14 Interpreting the Turner rebellion. (Source day #5: accounts of slave rebellions written by whites)

Reading: 1) The Confessions of Nat Turner (1831) http://docsouth.unc.edu/turner/turner.html

2) Vincent Harding, "Symptoms of Liberty and Blackhead Signposts: David Walker and Nat Turner," in Nat Turner: A Slave Rebellion in History and Memory (2003), 80-102. (R)

TH 11/16 **response due from Groups A & B taking a position on the issue raised by Michael Johnson’s essay

Reading: 1) Michael P. Johnson, “Rethinking Rebellious Slaves and Slave Rebellions in North America: Reflections on Contexts, Sources, and Written History,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic July 21, 2006. (e-mail)

2) Responses to Johnson’s paper by Edward Baptist and Jan E. Lewis. (e-mail)

T 11/21 Source Paper Due. View Nightjohn in class.

Thanksgiving Break

T 11/28 Free Black resistance to slavery and racism.

Reading: 1) Deborah Gray White, “Let My People Go,” in To Make Our World Anew: A History of African-Americans (2000), 199-226. (R)

2) Excerpts from David Walker Address to the Coloured Citizens of the World (1829) (R)

3) Excerpts from Martin Delany, The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States (1852) (R)

TH 11/30 Cultural resistance to slavery on the plantation.

Reading: 1) Stephanie Camp, “The Pleasures of Resistance: Enslaved Women and Body Politics in the Plantation South, 1830-1861,” Journal of Southern History 2002 68(3): 533-572. (R)

2) Excerpts from Lawrence Levine, Black Culture Black Consciousness: African-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom (1977) (R)

T 12/5 Returning to the question…what is slavery?

Reading: 1) Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, in Gates, ed., The Classic Slave Narratives, 437-549

TH 12/7 What is slavery, what is freedom?

Reading: 1) Jacobs, 549-667.

Take Home Essay Exam due 12/11