This is an introductory survey course in African-American history. Much of the focus of the course will be on slavery and the emergence of white supremacy and white institutionalized racism. The course will briefly survey the African ancestral past, and the emergence of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. We will look closely at the formative experience of Virginia and North Carolina in the colonial period; the era of the American Revolution, and the antebellum period. We will also look at the role of cultural, economic and epidemiological (disease) factors that contributed to the emergence of chattel slavery and Anglo-American racism against people of color. We will also examine "resistance," and the slave conspiracies and revolts.

This is a multicultural course and therefore the African-American experience in the United States will be examined in a comparative, hemispheric perspective that looks at the fate of people of African extraction in the entire Western Hemisphere (the "New World"). This will involve comparison with the fate of African people in the Caribbean and Latin America. It will also involve comparison with the genocidal near extermination of the indigenous Native Americans or "Indians." This course will also place some emphasis on the experience of black men and black women under slavery, and how it was alike for both but also different for each gender.

Students are explicitly advised that this course emphasizes the colonial and antebellum periods (before the Civil War of 1861-65). Students who desire information about a later time period or topic, such as Reconstruction (1865-1877), the World Wars, the civil rights movement (1954-1968), Malcolm X, or the Black Panthers should take History 204 (African American History II) in the spring, or History 480: Special Topics: The Civil Rights Movement, when it is next offered. Students could also take Introduction to African American Studies, offered this semester from 2:50-4:10 pm.

For Syllabus Click here

Lecture on Slavery in North Carolina

Lecture on Revolutionary Period

Lecture on Slave Revolts, Early National Period

Lecture on Frederick Douglass

Election of 1860

Antebellum Politics

Underground Railroad