African American Intellectual History: African Roots through W. E. B. Du Bois

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This course will survey African American intellectual history, out of Africa and through the early twentieth century. It will examine that history by focusing upon one central issue: What is the best strategy for combatting racism? The two major strategies have been: 1) integrationism, using moral suasion, that is, non-violent appeals to the consciences of white people, and 2) separatism, that is, strategies, often militant, that aim to preserve and promote Black identity and culture.

What is the best strategy for combatting anti-Black racism? That is the question that has dominated African American intellectual history. In pre-revolution America, African peoples, both free and slave, sought to develop personal relations both among themselves and with white people. The Revolution and Thomas Jefferson’s famous rhetoric in the Declaration of Independence brought hope to Black Americans: :We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal” African Americans imagined that if they simply appealed persistently to that document and its principles, along with the principles of Christian love, which white people professed, white people’s consciences would eventually move them to see the immorality of the slave system and the racism underlying it. After about 50 years of unsuccessful efforts in moral suasion, around 1830, many African Americans reached the conclusions that white Americans never truly believed in their own rhetoric about equality and universal human liberty, but merely used such language only for their own parochial interest; that white Americans were not true Christians; and that White Americans, for the most part, lacked consciences to which African Americans might appeal. Hence was born “racial realism,” the belief that race and racism are, for all practical purposes, permanent features of U.S. society, and therefore some other strategies for dealing with that racism, besides moral suasion, are necessary, which include separation from the mainstream, white society and possible use of violence. Much of African American intellectual history, to this day, revolves around that debate, as illustrated by the disagreements between Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X.

Required:

Selections from

William Andrews and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (editors), Slave Narratives

Richard Newman (ed.), Pamphlets of Protest: An Anthology of Early African-American Protest Literature, 1790-1860

Frederick Douglass, Selected Speeches and Writings

W. E. B. Du Bois, W.E.B. Du Bois Reader

Alain Locke, The New Negro (1925)

Anna Julia Cooper, “Womanhood: A Vital Element in the Regeneration and Progress of a Race” (1886), http://docsouth.unc.edu/church/cooper/cooper.html, and “Women’s Cause Is One and Universal” (1893), http://www.blackpast.org/?q=1893-anna-julia-cooper-womens-cause-one-and-universal

Ida B. Wells-Barnett, “Lynch Law in Georgia” (1899), http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/murray:@field(DOCID+@lit(lcrbmrpt1612)):@@@$REF$

Booker T. Washington, “The Atlanta Exposition Address” (1895), https://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/92/up-from-slavery/1632/chapter-14-the-atlanta-exposition-address/

Recommended:

Ifeanyi A. Menkiti, “Person and Community in African Traditional Thought,” from Richard A. Wright (ed.), African Philosophy, 2nd ed. (1979), pp. 157-68

Nathan Irvin Huggins, Black Odyssey: The African American Ordeal in Slavery

Edward Wilmont Blyden, African Life and Customs

William Whipper, “Non-Resistance to Offensive Aggression” (1837), http://blackpast.org/?q=1837-william-whipper-non-resistance-offensive-aggression

Thomas Fortune, “The Present Relations of Labor and Capitol” (1886), http://blackpast.org/?q=1886- t-thomas-fortune-present-relations-labor-and-capitol

Alexander Crummell, Civilization and Black Progress

Lucy Parsons, Address to the 1st Convention of the Industrial Workers of the World (1905)

William H. Ferris, The African Abroad (1913)

Kelly Miller, “The Harvest of Race Prejudice” (1925)

Marcus Garvey, “Made in Harlem” (1924), http://marcusgarvey.com/?p=830; “Look for Me in the Whirlwind” (1925), https://www.embracingspirituality.com/2014/06/05/marcus-garveylook-for-me-in-the-whirlwind/

Alain Locke, “Cultural Pluralism” (1942)

Leonard Harris (editor), Philosophy Born of Struggle

As a result of this course students should:

a) be familiar with major figures and central issues and themes in African American intellectual history;

b) understand African American thought as it has developed out of the distinct experiences and traditions of African people and within the context of African American history;

c) understand better present-day debates over race in the United States in light of African American intellectual history;

d) improve their abilities to read critically and communicate clearly their interpretations of what they have read;

e) improve their abilities to participate thoughtfully and knowledgeably in class discussion; and

f) improve their abilities to express themselves coherently and clearly in writing.

Regular, active participation in classroom discussion: 20%

3 one-page, weekly discussions of assigned reading: 30%

Final, written synthesis paper (6-8 pages): 50%