HIST 266 - Civil Rights Movement in America

2023-2024 Catalog Year

Credit(s): 4
Lecture: 4
Non-Lecture: 0

Through the Civil Rights Movement, African Americans and their white allies initiated and maintained a massive social movement which assaulted centuries of discrimination, segregation, and racism in the United States. We will examine, not only familiar images from the movement, but also the larger forces that made the movement possible. We will identify the social, political, and economic changes that contributed to the making of the Movement, paying particular attention to the African-American tradition of struggle and protest. Within the movement, we will consider such topics as the role of public leaders and grass roots activists; the role of the media; the extent and nature of nonviolence and self-defense; and the relationship between national events, leaders, laws, and organizations and local movements and local realities; and the Black Power movement of the late 1960s.

Offered: Once a year