AFAM 101: The Black Experience

Course Overview

Welcome to AFAM 101, The Black Experience. The primary objectives of this course are to provide the following:

• a clear understanding of the origins of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the development of the American racial system
• a knowledge of early African-American political thought, social experience, economic endeavors, and cultural expression.
• the opportunity to develop the critical-thinking skills necessary to understand our American past.

The course is designed to follow a historical chronology of events and trends experienced by Africans and African Americans from 1441 to 1861. During this period, slavery was a major social and cultural force throughout the New World, and thus it is the focus of this course. We will also discuss the experiences of African Americans who were not enslaved during the time of slavery. One of the most important issues we will explore is how slavery became associated (almost) exclusively with black peoples in the Americas, and the origins of our current concepts of race during this time period.

Many of the issues we will discuss are controversial, have significant political implications, and are actively debated by scholars. As your instructor, I am excited about engaging in these issues with you, and I welcome your opinions and insights. Please be sure to communicate with me in an open and nonconfrontational manner.

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Required Texts and Materials

Two texts and a video series are required for this course.

Textbooks

• African Americans in the Colonial Era: From African Origins through the American Revolution, 2nd edition, 2000, by Donald R. Wright

This volume is an excellent synthesis of the best current scholarship on the experiences of African Americans in the slave trade, early and late colonial America, and the revolutionary periods.

• Ar'n't I a Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South, revised edition, 1999, by Deborah Gray White

This important study of enslaved American women examines labor, resistance, sexuality, culture, and family. White argues that women experienced slavery differently than men as she explores the stereotypes and realities of female bondage.

Video series

• Africans in America: America's Journey through Slavery, four-part PBS video series

  One of the basic sources of material for this course is a four-part PBS video series, Africans in America: America's Journey through Slavery. This video series is an excellent political history of the African-American experience between 1450 and 1865. The lessons will provide instructions about what parts of this series to view and when to view them. You will want to carefully read the instructions and the overview before each viewing, and to take good notes as you watch the video.

  You will also work extensively with the Web site that was developed to support this video series. The Web site Africans in America has an excellent brief text, identified as the “narrative,” as well as a fascinating collection of primary source documents in the “resource bank.” The site is divided into four parts, corresponding with each of the 120-minute videos: “The Terrible Transformation, 1450-1750,” “Revolution, 1750-1805,” “Brotherly Love, 1791-1831,” “Judgment Day, 1831-1865.”

Textbooks: You can order the textbooks from the Higher Grounds bookstore at the Friday Center either online or by using the book order form. Video series: You will need to order the videos or DVDs from another source such as Amazon.com or at PBS.org (VHS | DVD).

NOTE: The course also requires students to read portions of four books written by Africans and African Americans during the time of slavery, thus providing an “insider’s” perspective to the visceral experience of slavery and examples of the political writing of enslaved Americans (these were all written to help bring about an end to slavery). You can find these narratives online at the sites below. If you prefer a hard copy, or book, most of these are readily available in libraries and book stores. The Jacobs, Douglass, and Equiano narratives can be found in a single volume, The Classic Slave Narratives, 2002 reissue, edited by Henry Louis Gates.

• The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African
• Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
• Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
• David Walker, Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World

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Supplemental Materials and Web Sites

There are thousands of excellent articles and books about the New World black experience and a growing number of Web sites with links to primary source material as well as analyses.

The Stone Center library at UNC has created a very useful Web site for scholars and students who are interested in researching and reading about the African Diaspora.

Students who would like a more comprehensive “textbook” are strongly encouraged to use one of these excellent resources, available in most libraries and bookstores:

• The African-American Odyssey (Volume 1), 3rd edition, 2002, by Darlene Clark Hine, William C. Hine, and Stanley Harrold
• From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans, 8th edition, 2000, by John Hope Franklin and Alfred A. Moss
• To Make Our World Anew: A History of African Americans, 2000, edited by Robin Kelley and Earl Lewis

Here are some other useful African-American history Web resources. This is just a start!

• The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record is a vast and interesting collection of illustrations, art work, maps and photographs of the slave trade and slavery in the United States and Latin America.
• The American Anthropological Association's Statement on "Race" discusses the controversial history and (mis)use of the term.
• The full text (and analyses) of the Declaration of Independence. Were all men really created equal in 1776?
• The full text (and various analyses) of the Constitution of the United States.  A close reading will let you see the debate about slavery (and, more generally, race) that is encoded in the three-fifths compromise. Also look at the Bill of Rights and Amendments 11-27, which include the 13th Amendment, which actually ended legal slavery in the United States (Amendments 14 and 15 are relevant to this course as well).
• The Library of Congress has mounted an excellent site on the Amistad case with many useful primary sources.
• American Slave Narratives have been collected by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and archived by the University of Virginia.
• The text of the Dred Scott v. Sanford decision issued by the Supreme Court in 1857.
• A speech by Abraham Lincoln on the Dred Scott decision.
• The full text (and an analysis) of the Emancipation Proclamation. This is useful when considering what really ended slavery in the United States.

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Course Requirements

Reading Responses (20% of course grade)
After completing each lesson, you will be asked to write a brief response to the material covered in that lesson. These should be fairly short (50-200 words) and will be submitted to me via e-mail. The reading responses are a way for you to share your ideas about the issues brought up by the readings and other course materials. Your responses will not be graded for spelling and grammar (within reason), so feel free to write informally. Remember, however, to please keep your responses clean and respectful.

To get full credit for this section of the course, you must respond to questions for each lesson, specifically addressing the issues presented in the response prompt, and demonstrating your knowledge of the readings for that lesson. In response prompts with multiple questions, you do not need to answer each question unless otherwise specified. Use the questions as inspiration rather than strict guidelines. However, you should try to pull from the various materials for the lesson, demonstrating that you have completed all the assignments.

Two Course Essays (20% of course grade each)
You will be required to submit a short essay for Lesson 5 and for Lesson 11. These essays are fairly short (500-800 words) and are exercises in effective writing. Each essay prompt will ask you to respond to a particular question, utilizing the materials presented in previous lessons. Essays should include direct quotations and information from course readings to support the development of issues and ideas. Responses longer than 1,000 words are unacceptable, so you will have to make your argument in a succinct and organized manner. Detailed instructions on the expectations for essays are available. Please read all instructions carefully!

Final Exam (40% of course grade)
Your final exam will be an essay in which you will utilize the writing skills and historical knowledge you have gained during the course. The two shorter essays are designed to prepare you for writing this final exam essay, which is longer (1,500-2,500 words) and will be on a topic of your choice. You will submit a paragraph describing your potential essay topic along with your Reading Response assignment for Lesson 13.

For the final exam essay, you must demonstrate your mastery of the materials on your topic that are presented in the course, but you may also bring in additional sources if you wish. This essay must have correctly formatted citations and a bibliography.

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Honor Code

All work in AFAM 101 falls under UNC's Honor Code. All sources must be correctly credited, and you must submit only work that you created specifically for this class. If you have any questions about whether your usage of sources is acceptable, please contact me.

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Instructor and Student Introduction

Since this course is not held in a classroom, we will probably never get a chance to meet in person. Still, I would still like to know something about you so that I can associate each e-mail message from you with something more than a screen name.

The first thing I would like you to do as part of this course is to send me a quick e-mail message to introduce yourself (you'll find my e-mail address in the gray bar at the top of this page). Tell me your name, where you live, what you do, why you are interested in taking this class, and something interesting about yourself.

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Library Resources

Students enrolled in Self-paced Courses can access online library resources from the UNC Library System by linking to Library Services for Distance Education Students. This site includes information on using general online reference works.

If you are using an off-campus computer, you will need to consult this page for instructions on how to access the resources. The UNC library staff is available to assist any students who have difficulties accessing online library resources.

If you are using an off-campus computer and you have a UNC Onyen, enter your Onyen to access the library site. If you do not have an Onyen, use your PID. If you do not know your PID, you can find it here. If the library site does not recognize your PID, contact Carol McDonnell and ask her to have you added to the library's database.

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Course Mechanics

E-mail

Notify both me and Janice Durham at the Friday Center if your e-mail address changes.

If you use a spam filter on your e-mail account, you are responsible for ensuring that it does not prevent you from receiving messages from me or the Friday Center staff.

Submitting Assignments

Submit your assignments by using the "Submit Assignment" button located at the bottom of each lesson page. This button opens an e-mail message that is pre-addressed to me and Student Services with the correct subject line. This is important because the assignment must be sent to both me and Student Services to get credit for your work.

Note! If you use an e-mail service (such as hotmail.com or yahoo.com), the "Submit Assignment" buttons may not work for you. In this case, you will need to send a regular e-mail message that is addressed to both me and Student Services (stuserv@unc.edu).

It is extremely important for you to save copies of any work you send to me via e-mail. If I don't receive your work, you must have a duplicate copy. It is your responsibility to maintain copies of your sent e-mails, as there is no way to guarantee that any e-mail message will be delivered.

Please check your e-mail software to see how it manages sent and saved messages. Some software automatically deletes messages one month after they have been sent; others only save messages if they are filed in folders; others save messages received but not those sent. You may need to send yourself a copy of your e-mailed assignment at the same time you send it to me, or you may need to print a copy of the e-mail message and any attachments to keep in your paper files. No matter how your system works, make sure you know how to save a copy of all work that you submit to me and that you save the copy for several months beyond the end of the course.

Other Questions

Please contact the following people if you need help.

If you have questions regarding:

• the content of the course and your progress, contact me (your instructor). There is a link to my e-mail address in the gray navigation bar at the top of every lesson page. Please include "SPC AFAM 101" in the subject line of your e-mail.
• problems with this Web site, including bad links, contact the instructional designer at the Friday Center.
• any logistical questions (enrollment, Onyen, PID, credits, withdrawal, and so on), contact the Student Services staff at the Friday Center for Continuing Education (phone 919-962-1134 or 800-862-5669).

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Lessons

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Lesson 1