AFR 459(S) Jim Crow (Same as History 459)

HIST 459(S) Jim Crow (Same as Africana Studies 459)
Between the years 1896 and 1954 the United States instituted a set of laws, rules, and customs designed to segregate African Americans - and with the sanction of the courts, the Congress, and the President. Jim Crow, as this system was known, impressed the cultural, social, political, and economic conditions in ways that assured racial discrimination. Considering the Jim Crow era as a specific time period, this course engages broad themes of history: the importance of context and perspective, the place of historiography in shaping questions, critiquing sources, and making arguments, and the dynamics of race, gender, and power. From both sides of the color line - white and black - the course explores law, cultural production, community and institutional development, and the roles of violence, media, and personal experience in sustaining this new racial world. Finally, the course examines the system's inherent paradox: colliding ideologies about human rights and freedom.
Format: seminar. Evaluation will be based on class participation and two shorter assignments leading up to a longer research paper.
Enrollment limit: 15 (expected: 10-15). Preference given to junior and senior History majors.
Group F
Hour: L. BROWN