When you think of the Civil Rights Movement, who comes to mind? Martin Luther King, Jr.? Rosa Parks? Fannie Lou Hamer? Why not James Forten, David Walker, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Harriet and Dred Scott, and Sallie J. Robinson? And what exactly are civil rights, anyway?

We usually associate “the” Civil Rights Movement with the 1950s and ‘60s. But historians now argue that the first Civil Rights Movement coincided with the nation’s founding. Indeed, early Black activists gave legal and cultural meaning to civil rights – which were not constitutionalized until the end of the Civil War. This course analyzes the court cases and literature through which Black activists not only fought for, but defined, civil rights in the U.S.

For majors who declared in Fall 2023 or later, this course fulfills the following historical requirement for the English major:
Literatures & Cultures, 1700-1900