SOC 349 - ‘We Shall Overcome’: White Terror, Black Struggle, and American Memory

(Same as HIST 349.) In this course, students will gain a better understanding of America’s history of systemic racial violence and oppression against African-Americans, key moments in the historical struggle for civil rights and racial justice, and how memory of this past relates to racial politics of the present. The course moves through the historical periods of Reconstruction, Jim Crow, the Civil Rights Era, and Reagan’s America -each illustrating how white terrorism took a variety of institutional and extra-institutional forms through time, such as the Black Codes and Jim Crow laws, convict-leasing, lynching, segregation, sexual violence, and the War on Drugs. This interterm course consists of: three weeks of engagement with historical, sociological, and feminist scholarship and film; and the additon of one week of “stepping into history” including travel to Atlanta, GA, Birmingham, Tuskegee, and key sites along the Selma to Montgomery Historic Trail in Alabama. As a central research site of the course, students will visit The National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama– the nation’s first memorial dedicated to the thousands of black people terrorized by lynching during the late-19th and 20th centuries to analyze how it works as “counter discourse” in the visual and political construction of national memory on racial violence and terror. Students will also visit the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta, GA and several key historic civil rights locations in Alabama. Through historical research assignments and ethnographic methods, including a photo project and an oral history project, coursework will culminate in an exploration of the connections between this turbulent history and current issues related to race. Letter grade with Pass/No Pass option. Fee: TBD. (Offered interterm.) 3 credits