AFRAM 334 A: Civil Rights and Black Power in the United States

Note: A full and detailed syllabus with course assignments will be provided closer to winter quarter. Please contact the instructor with any questions as you consider enrolling in the course. Everything below is tentative and subject to change.

AFRAM 334 / HSTAA 334

Civil Rights and Black Power in the United States

time: Mondays and Wednesdays, 1:30-3:20pm

classroom: SIG 227

format: lecture/seminar hybrid (interactive lecture with intermittent in-class activities)

Prof. Matthew Alexander Randolph        

Department of American Ethnic Studies                                                                                                         Office: B-525 Padelford (fifth floor) Office Hours: Mondays and Wednesdays, 3:30-5pm

Contact information: mattrph@uw.edu (https://aes.washington.edu/people/matthew-randolph)  

 Course Description (subject to change before January 2026):

This course assesses the African American freedom struggle in the United States with a balanced emphasis on political and cultural transformations in American society. The course explores the Civil Rights and Black Power movements as twin traditions of activism often working toward the same goal but through notably different strategies and tactics. After a review of the ebb and flow of Black citizenship rights in the aftermath of the Civil War and Reconstruction, the course revolves around the birth of “the movement” - the tidal wave of civil rights milestones beginning in the postwar period of the 1950s and 1960s - through the 1980s as the Black Power movement receded. Class lectures, discussions and readings will offer an overview of the critical debates among historians and other scholars in defining the contours and interpreting the meaning of the archival record. While we will pay attention to the porous layers of local, regional, and national politics, the course takes seriously the global context of the struggle and transformative experiences of travel and exile that transformed African American understandings about the stakes of their freedom for liberation elsewhere in the world. Museum visits, library explorations, and community engagement opportunities in Seattle will complement assigned primary sources and scholarly texts.

Areas of extensive examination include the contested origins, timelines, and geographies the civil rights movement; the relationship between civil rights and human rights; philosophies and principles of nonviolence versus self-defense; the university and student activism; the legal system, both its possibilities and limits for achieving racial equality; environmental racism; popular culture, the arts, and sports as they relate to social justice; intersections of race, gender, class, and sexuality within Black political praxis; parallel mobilizations around feminist and LGBTQ+ issues; solidarities and coalition-building efforts across Black, Asian-American, Latinx, and Indigenous communities in the United States; the Pacific Northwest as a case study to think through national issues on a local and regional levels; (mis)interpretations of Black Power in public memory; issues of archival preservation, public memory, and oral history; and the functional legacy of civil rights history for sustaining multiracial democracy in the twenty-first century.

 Previous coursework in History and/or African American Studies is strongly recommended, but not required to enroll.

Modules:

1. Foundations - Weeks 1 & 2 (Age of Revolution / American Founding; Nineteenth Century - Civil War, Reconstruction, Gilded Age; World Wars; the Great Migration; the NAACP and school desegregation; independence of Ghana and the origins of African decolonization) 
2. The Movement - Weeks 3,4, & 6 (student movements - SNCC, CORE; freedom rides and marches; MLK and Malcolm X; civil rights legislation; rise of Black Power and Pan-Africanism) 
3. Black Freedom in the Pacific Northwest - Weeks 7 & 8  (community-engaged learning; local, regional vs. national history; Seattle/Washington State as a case study, unique but also representative of larger Civil Rights/Black Power trends)  
4. The 1970s and the 1980s - Week 9 (The Vietnam War, human rights diplomacy in Latin America, the decline in Black Power ideology, the rise of (neo)liberalism and conservatism, Cold War escalation)
5. The 1990s and the 2000s - Week 10 (end of South African apartheid; multiracial/multicultural America, "post-racial" and "colorblind" American narratives, public memory of Civil Rights/Black Power eras; from the age of Obama to the age of Trump; mass incarceration; The New Jim Crow/Code)

Required Texts:

1. The Fire Next Time (James Baldwin, 1963)
2. The Eyes on the Prize Civil Rights Reader: Documents, Speeches, and Firsthand Accounts from the Black Freedom Struggle (by editors Clayborne Carson, David J. Garrow, Gerald Gill, Vincent Harding, and Darlene Clark Hine)  

The cover may vary, but just ensure you have a 1991 edition of the text for our class.

Course/Learning Objectives: (By the end of this course, you should be able to…) 

• Analyze primary sources with close-reading skills and contextualize them in their particular historical moments 
• Identify the differences and similarities between the parallel social movements for Civil Rights and Black Power in the United States 

• Understand the processes for conducting archival research in both digital and analog collections 

• Evaluate evidence-based arguments and contextualize them in larger academic discourses
• Develop a research-grounded project from start to finish and effectively articulate the findings and insights 

Course Assignments/Requirements:

100 points of credit (100%)

30% Final Project: Autobiography Review, Research Paper, or Digital/Creative Project 

5% Prospectus 

5% Outline (or Project Blueprint for Digital/Creative Project) 

5% Half-Draft 

15% Final Draft

30% Primary Source Papers (3 papers x 10% each, written in-class, bluebook style)

Analyze, compare, and contrast the documents in one chapter of EOTP (you select the chapters you’re most interested in) 

Paper length: 2-3 pages, 12-pt. font, double-spaced 

30% Canvas Posts (15 posts x 3% each) (200-300 words)

Respond to discussion board prompts by 11:59pm the night before class 

10% Group Presentation

Once during the quarter, you will help the professor teach one of the EOTP chapters with 2-3 of your classmates. In your presentation, you are required to present for 15 minutes: summarize key points from the primary sources in the chapter at hand, observe resonances with contemporary events, and pose discussion questions for the class.  

5% Participation  

2.5% - Attending a 15-min office hours apt. in January (get-to-know you meeting)

2.5% - Attending a 15-min office hours apt. in February/March (final project) 

(additional office hours visits are encouraged, but optional)