The purpose of this course is to examine the African American experience in the United States from 1863 to the present. Prominent themes include the end of the Civil War and the beginning of Reconstruction; African Americans' urbanization experiences; the development of the modern civil rights movement and its aftermath; and the thought and leadership of Booker T. Washington, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X. WARNING: Some of the lectures in this course contain graphic content and/or adult language that some users may find disturbing.

"African American Perspectives" gives a panoramic and eclectic review of African American history and culture and is primarily comprised of two collections in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division: the African American Pamphlet Collection and the Daniel A.P. Murray Collection with a date range of 1822 through 1909. Most were written by African-American authors, though some were written by others on topics of particular importance in African-American history. Among the authors represented are Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Benjamin W. Arnett, Alexander Crummel, Emanuel Love, Lydia Maria Child, Kelly Miller, Charles Sumner, Mary Church Terrell, and Booker T. Washington, among others.

The 800 + titles in the collection include sermons on racial pride and political activism; annual reports of charitable, educational, and political organizations; and college catalogs and graduation orations from the Hampton Institute, Morgan College, and Wilberforce University. Also included are biographies, slave narratives, speeches by members of Congress, legal documents, poetry, playbills, dramas, and librettos. Other materials focus on segregation, voting rights, violence against African Americans, the colonization of Africa by freed slaves, anti-slavery organizations and investigative reports. Several of the items are illustrated with portraits of the authors.

Students will complete an IDM (Inquiry Design Model) Lesson to guide them through the social and political discrimination, segregation, and violence against African Americans during the “Jim Crow Era.” They will evaluate the effectiveness of the Reconstruction Amendments based on three supporting questions that help guide them to constructing and providing evidence for a final argument that addresses the compelling question.

This unit explores perspectives on the central issues of the Progressive Era. Students examine the middle class reformers' attitudes towards immigrants; draw inferences about historical context by analyzing documents that relate to segregation of San Francisco schools in 1906; and question the reliability of Jacob Riis's photographs as accounts of the past. The unit includes cognitive modeling lessons - one that compares the perspectives of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B Dubois, and one that juxtaposes muckracking journalist Lincoln Steffens with political boss George Plunkitt. The Background on Woman Suffrage prepares students for the Anti-Suffragists lesson plan on why Americans opposed woman suffrage.