HIST 413 - Black Power and Structural Inequality in Post-1945

Credit(s): 3
Lecture: 3
Non-Lecture: 0
This course will focus on the post-World War II African-American experience, with particular attention to relevant national , state, and local policies and to northern and western urban centers. We will examine the basis for structural inequality, along with Black activism and alternative visions for Black communities and the country. Traditional narratives of the post-World War II era have focused on the southern Civil Rights Movement through the middle sixties, before moving North with a narrative that shifts to Black Power, white backlash, and urban de-industrialization and decline. In the past decade, historians have collectively challenged that framework and emphasis, illustrating, for example, that governmental policies which privileged whites and reinforced segregation pre-dated the southern movement and did not simply emerge in response to the angry and violent rhetoric of Black Power. Moreover, through northern-based local studies, historians have effectively illustrated that the dichotomies of South versus North and Civil Rights versus Black Power are far too simplistic, obscuring both long-term Black activism outside the South and the common roots and bases for Civil Rights and Black Power. We will explore these and other issues related to the post- World War II Black Freedom Struggle in the North and West and the interrelated themes of structural inequality and white privilege through our reading. Not offered on a regular basis.

Prerequisite(s): HIST 302 (HIST 301 also recommended).