HIS 450 - History of the Civil Rights Movement

Semester Hours: 3
This course will explore the history of the Civil Rights movement, starting in the 1950s with the struggle for school desegregation, culminating in the Brown vs. Board of Education decision in 1954. The following summer, the Emmet Till murder in Mississippi shocked the nation and by year’s end Rosa Parks had initiated the Montgomery Bus Boycott in Alabama, led by the Rev. Martin Luther King. In 1957, President Eisenhower ordered troops to protect nine black students trying to go to a desegregated school in Little Rock, Arkansas. By the early sixties, the movement had diversified, producing Freedom Riders who challenged segregated transportation systems in the South, Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam who galvanized large numbers of African Americans in the urban North. Lunch counter sit-ins across the south confronted Jim Crow social norms, and new student-led organizations such as Student Non-Violent Co-ordinating Committee (SNCC) pushed for more immediate change. The March on Washington in 1963 set the stage for the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Freedom Summer sent civil rights workers into the deep south to try and register African Americans to vote in 1964. Mass marches in Selma and Birmingham, AL provoked police brutality and ultimately led to the 1965 Voting Rights Act. After 1965 the movement started to come apart. Black Power leaders like Stokely Carmichael emerged as a radical new face of the movement and they endured fervent opposition from a fearful white population and more conservative voices within the Civil Rights movement. The Black Panthers started as a community organization in Oakland, CA, but they were viewed as a threat by law enforcement who killed many of its leaders, providing a bloody end to the movement. Please note: Students taking the 400-level version of this course will be required to read an additional book and complete a 10-page research paper.

Pre-requisites: none.

Offered: occasionally.