Slave Patrols and Black Codes

This three-part syllabus topic provides a thorough investigation of slave codes, black codes and the construction of the US slave patrol system as a prototype for Jim Crow segregation and modern-day antiblack policing theory.

Rhode Island, Racial Slavery, and Reparations

During the 1700s the colony of Rhode Island, one founded on a notion of religious liberty, became the power center of the North American trade in enslaved Africans. This dynamic class considers the crucial role Rhode Island played as North America’s central slave trading colony and state, and what that meant for the historical formation of the Americas, as well as the modern world. We will learn critical aspects of this history, understand why it matters today, and examine contemporary conversations around raparations and racial justice.

Introduction to the Modern Civil Rights Movement

This engaging class guides participants through an intensive exploration into the political technologies of two foundational moments in the southern Black freedom struggle, or what we now call the modern Civil Rights Movement: the Montgomery Bus Boycott and Dr. King’s Letter From Birmingham Jail. Here participants will use a collection of primary source documentation to help them examine resistance theory, organizing praxis, and cooperative economic thought. The class considers key players, strategies, and outcomes which gave political form and function to contemporary African American life and helped define the boundaries of freedom for all Americans.

Letter from a Birmingham Jail

Focusing on Dr. King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail this four-part workshop considers the power of nonviolent direct action as an instrument to abolish unjust laws. This workshop invites students to reflect on the concept of nonviolence as an instrument of social change. Students will be provided the opportunity to analyze primary source documents and discuss principles of social justice transformation in the past and present.

Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Black Women Who Built It

This three-part workshop moves past the deceptive narrative of Rosa Parks as a tired seamstress to critically engage students with the key players of the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the sophisticated and daring organizing necessary for victory.

#AssataTaughtMe: An Essential Study

This four-session reading group engages an intensive examination of Assata Shakur’s intellectual life and the ideological framework informing her political thought. Particularly, our focus is centered in the development of Shakur’s philosophy on liberation for Black people and what she sees as the conditions necessary to achieve it.

(Required Text: Assata: An Autobiography)

Blackface Minstrelsy and Image Consciousness

This three-part lesson explores the historical origin of blackface minstrelsy in the 1830s and contextualizes the racist ideologies that emanated from that period. We will provide participants with an introduction to the first truly American art form and help them understand how white civil society used minstrelsy to satirized and denigrate Black Americans for comedic relief and camaraderie.

(This lesson was visioned, designed, and curated by student-scholar, Zeinab Kante, as a component of her independent study for which I was honored to serve as advisor.)

The 1619 Project

In 2019 the New York Times launched the powerful 1619 Project, a first for the historic paper. It aimed to "reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative." This three-part workshop series will use primary components of the project to critique our understanding of the dimensions of race in American political, cultural, and social thought.