Course: History 7881/8881
Readings in African-American History to 1865
Spring 2007
Class Meets: Mitchell Hall, Room 223, Wednesday 5:30—8:30pm
Professor: Dr. Arwin D. Smallwood
Office: 121 Mitchell Hall, Phone: 678-3869
Office Hours: T, Th, 9 AM – 10 AM and by appointment
Readings in African-American History to 1865
This course is designed to introduce some of the most recent as well as standard
scholarship in the field of African-American history for the period from slavery
to 1865. The format of the course will be discussion of assigned core readings
supported by written reports. Each student is to read the core reading and
supplementary reading each week. Requirements of the course include 2 oral
reports on core readings with outlines turned in to instructor (25%), typed book
reviews (25%), class participation (20%), and a bibliographical essay examining
the scholarship on one of the relevant historical topics covered in this class
(30%). Core readings and some supplementary readings should be available for
purchase at the campus bookstore or found in the library. The bibliographic
essay will be due on December 2.
Week 1 Introduction
Core Readings: Arwin D. Smallwood, The Atlas of African American History
John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom
Week 2 Africa and its Peoples
Core Reading: George P. Murdock, Africa: Its Peoples and Their Culture History
Supplementary: Joseph E. Harris, Africans and Their History
Roland A. Oliver, The Dawn of African History 2nd ed.
Week 3 The African Slave Trades to Europe, Asia, and the MiddleEast
Core Reading: Patrick Manning, Slavery and African Life: Occidental, Oriental
and African Slave Trades
Supplementary: Fred Donner, The Early Islamic Conquests
Bernard Lewis, The Muslim Discovery of Europe
Bernard Lewis, Race and Slavery in the Middle East: An Historical Enquiry
Vincent Bakpetu Thompson, The Making of the African Diaspora in the Americas,
1441- 1900 African Slavery in the Americas
Week 4 African Slavery in the Caribbean and the Americas
Core Reading: Herbert S. Klein, African Slavery in Latin America and the
Caribbean
Supplementary: Robert B. Toplin, Slavery and Race Relations in Latin America
Peter M. Voelz, Slave and Soldier: The Military Impact of Blacks in the Colonial
Americas
Barbara Bush, Slave Women in Caribbean Society, 1650-1838
Eugene D. Genovese, From Rebellion to Revolution: Afro-American Slave Revolts in
the Making of the Modern World
Darlene Clark Hine and David Barry Gaspar, eds., More Than Chattel: Black Women
and Slavery in the Americas
Gary Y. Okihiro, ed., In Resistance: Studies in African, Caribbean and
Afro-American History
Richard Price, Maroon Societies: Rebel Slave Communities in the Americas
Week 5 The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
Core Reading: Joseph E. Inkori and Stanley L. Engerman, The Atlantic Slave
Trade: Effects on Economies, Societies, and Peoples in Africa, the Americas, and
Europe
Supplementary: Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade; A Census
Philip D. Curtin, The Tropical Atlantic in the Age of the Slave Trade
Daniel Mannix, Black Cargos: A History of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1518-1865
Robin Law, The Slave Coast of West Africa, 1550-1750: The Impact of the Atlantic
Slave Trade on an African Society
Week 6 Red, Black, and White and the Native American Slave Trade
Core Readings: Arwin D. Smallwood, “A History of Native American and African
Relations From 1502 to 1900,“ Negro History Bulletin (April-Sept. 1999)
William S. Willis, “Divide and Rule: Red White and Black in the Southeast,”
Journal of Negro History 48 (July 1963)
Sanford Winston, “Indian Slavery in the North Carolina Region,” Journal of Negro
History 19 (October 1934)
Jerome S. Handler, “The Amerindian Slave Population of Barbados” in the
Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries,” Caribbean Studies 8 (1969)
Kenneth W. Porter, “Relations between Negroes and Indians within the Present
Limits of the United States,” Journal of Negro History 17 (July 1932)
Kathryn E. Holland Braund, “The Creek Indians, Blacks and Slavery,” The Journal
of Southern History 57 (November 1991)
James W. Covington, “Some Observations Concerning the Florida-Carolina Indian
Slave Trade,” Florida Anthropologist 20 (1967)
Supplementary: Kim Dramer, Native Americans and Black Americans
Laurence Foster, Negro-Indian Relationships in the Southeast
Jack D. Forbes, Black Africans and Native Americans: Color, Race and Caste in
the Evolution of Red-Black Peoples
Jack D. Forbes, Africans and Native Americans: The Language of Race and the
Evolution of Red-Black Peoples
Week 7 Colonial Slavery
Core Readings: Allan Kulikoff, Tobacco and Slaves: The Development of Southern
Cultures in the Chesapeake, 1680-1800
Alan Watson, Slave Law in the Americas
Supplementary: Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class
in the English West Indies, 1624-1713
Mechal Sobel, The World They Made Together: Black and White Values in Eighteenth
Century Virginia
David W. Cohen and Jack P. Greene, eds., Neither Slave nor Free; The Freedman of
African Descent in the Slave Societies of the New World
Clifford Lindsey Alderman, Rum, Slaves and Molasses: The Story of New
England’sTriangular Trade
John W. Blassingame, The Slave Community
Week 8 Colonial Resistance to Slavery
Core Reading: Marion G. McDougall, Fugitive Slaves (1619-1865)
Supplementary: David W. Cohen and Jack P. Greene, eds., Neither Slave nor Free;
The Freedman of African Descent in the Slave Societies of the New World
Charles L. Blockson, The Underground Railroad
Herbert Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts, 6th ed.
Mary S. Locke, Anti-Slavery in America from the Introduction of African Slaves
to the Prohibition of the Slave Trade (1619-1808)
Week 9 Free Blacks Slaves and the American Revolution
Core Reading: Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the American Revolution, 3rd ed,
Supplementary: Wilson, Ellen Gibson, The Loyal Blacks
James Walker W. S. G., The Black Loyalist: The Search for a Promised Land in
Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone, 1783-1870.
Ira Berlin, and Ronald Hoffman, eds. Slavery and Freedom in the Age of the
American Revolution.
Week 10 The “Peculiar Institution” and the “Cotton Kingdom”
Core Readings: Kenneth M. Stampp, The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the
Ante-Bellum South
William E. Dodd, The Cotton Kingdom” A Chronicle of the Old South
Supplementary: Julie P. Baker, Black Slavery Among the American Indians
Loren Schweninger, Black Property Owners in the South, 1790-1915
John Hebron Moore, The Emergence of the Cotton Kingdom in the Old Southwest:
Mississippi, 1770-1860
Harold D. Woodman, King Cotton and His Retainers: Financing and Marketing the
Cotton Crop of the South, 1800-1925
Phillip S. Foner, History of Black Americans from the Emergence of the Cotton
Kingdom to the Eve of the Compromise of 1850
Week 11 Slavery and the rise of Sectionalism
Core Reading: Don E. Fehrenbacher, Slave Holding Republic
Supplementary: Don E. Fehrenbacher, Slavery, Law and Politics: The Dred Scott
Case in Historical Perspective
Frederic Bancroft, Slave Trading in the Old South
Week 12 Fugitive Slaves, Revolts, and the Anti-slavery Movement,
Core Reading: Louis Filler, Crusade against Slavery, 1830-1860.
Supplementary: Tom W. Shick, Behold the Promised Land: A History of
Afro-American Settler Society in Nineteenth-Century Liberia
P.J. Staudenraus, The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865
John Lofton, Denmark Vesey’s Revolt: The Slave Plot That Lit a Fuse to Fort
Sumter
Robert S. Starobin, ed., Denmark Vesey: The Slave Conspiracy of 1822
Herbert Aptheker, Nat Turner’s Slave Rebellion
Kenneth S. Greenberg, ed., The Confessions of Nat Turner and Related Documents
Henry Irving Tragle, The Southampton Slave Revolt of 1831: A Compilation of
Source Material, Including the Full Text of The Confessions of Nat Turner
Rosalie Schwartz, Across the Rio to Freedom: U.S. Negroes in Mexico
Benjamin Quarles, Allies for Freedom: Blacks and John Brown
Jeffrey S. Rossbach, Ambivalent Conspirators: John Brown, The Secret Six, and a
Theory of Slave Violence
Week 13 Slaves, Free Blacks and The Civil War
Core Readings: Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the Civil War
Supplementary: William E. Dodd, The Cotton Kingdom” A Chronicle of the Old
Benjamin Quarles, Lincoln and the Negro
Louis S. Gerteis, From Contraband to Freedman: Federal Policy Toward Southern
Blacks, 1861-1865
Ervin L. Jordan, Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in Civil War Virginia
Robert F. Durden, The Gray and the Black: The Confederate Debate on Emancipation
John Hope Franklin, The Emancipation Proclamation
Arthur W. Bergeron, Jr., Black Southerners in Gray: Essays on Afro-Americans in
Confederate Armies
Ira Berlin, Joseph P. Reidy and Leslie Rowland, eds., The Black Military
Experience
Week 14 Reconstruction
Core Reading: Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution
Supplementary: Thomas C. Holt, Black Over White
Barbara Fields, Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground
Leon Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long
W.E.B. DuBois, Black Reconstruction
Peter Kolchin, First Freedom
Week 15 Bibliographic Essay Due