Course Description
Literature, film, and photography from and about the American Civil Rights Movement, from the desegregation campaigns of World War II through 1972’s National Black Political Convention. Students will participate in an experiential learning project assisting local communities in preserving or memorializing movement histories and stories.
Athena Title
Civil Rights Lit and Culture
Non-Traditional Format
Course includes a service-learning project during the semester that either employs skills or knowledge learned in the course or teaches new skills or knowledge related to course objectives. Students will be involved in the planning and implementation of the project(s) and may spend time outside of the classroom. Students will be engaged in the service-learning component for approximately 25-50% of overall instructional time.
Prerequisite
ENGL 1102 or ENGL 1102E or ENGL 1103 or ENGL 1050H or ENGL 1060H
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
Students will learn to: 1. think critically so that they can recognize how and why perceptions of movement leaders and groups may differ over time from their actual intentions and missions; 2. think critically so that they can identify how the literature, film, and photography of the movement has evolved and changed to reflect social and political gains and setbacks; 3. apply skills of literary analysis to their interpretations of literature, photography, and film and write persuasively about what they have seen and read; 4. discuss and write analytical papers and paper drafts about such following key concepts of movement activism in relation to literature, film, and photography: the idea of participatory democracy, the concept of the Beloved Community, the use of nonviolence to dismantle segregation, the leadership of women and grassroots community members, the strategic use of media to leverage social change, internal tensions within and between southern and northern movement organizations, the influence of local activism on national policy, and the culture and etiquette of Jim Crow; 5. think deeply and write analytically about how perceptions of race and racial difference have informed movement literature, film, and photography; and about why segregationists privileged the inaccurate notion of two races, blacks and whites; 6. list ways in which movement literature, film, and photography extend themes that characterized the earlier African American freedom struggle for emancipation, as well as how they anticipate contemporary discussions of social, political, and economic issues that affect the poor and people of color today; 7. and apply their writing and speaking skills to assisting in experiential learning projects that document and memorialize local communities’ participation during the civil rights movement and/or that employ archival sources to educate community and public school audiences about this era.
Topical Outline
The selections of specific topics will vary from instructor to instructor and from semester to semester. Here is one example of how instructors might organize the course: A. The Modern Civil Rights Movement 1) What is Race? 2) What was Jim Crow? 3) Nonviolent direct social action and the Beloved Community: advantages and limitations 4) Women’s leadership in the movement: myths and realities 5) The King Years (1955-68) and their legacy in literary and visual representations B. Rethinking the Civil Rights Movement 1) What is Black Power? 2) What was the Black Arts Movement? 3) Beyond a black/white binary: Latino, Asian, and/or Native American activism 4) Beyond the Movement: the so-called decade of the black woman writer (1980-1990) and the imprint of black public intellectuals such as Ta’Nehisi Coates, bell hooks, Michael Eric Dyson, Melissa Harris Perry, Yolanda Pierce, and/or others 5) The Movement’s legacy in local communities (presentations of final student work in experiential learning projects, such as the Freedom Riders Memorial Project in Anniston, Alabama; the Flat Rock Community Preservation Project in Roswell, Georgia; the Morehouse College Martin Luther King, Jr. Collection in Atlanta, Georgia; and the Civil Rights Digital Library, University of Georgia)