AAST 289 - Black Wall Streets: African American Urban Experience from Progressive Era to the Great Depression

FC ARHU CD

4 credits
In the post Reconstruction Era, the United States experienced unprecedented urban growth. For the first time in U.S. history urban dwellers outnumbered rural Americans, a process that continued throughout the twentieth century. African Americans were integral to the growth of these new urban centers, creating their own “cities within cities” due to de jure and de facto systems of segregation. This course explores how Black people in the North, South, and Mid-West engaged in the new urbanism of the period. How did urban systems impact the Black experience? Who were the Black Progressives? What was the African American contribution to the Labor Movement? How did Black women navigate within the Suffrage Movement? Why was Black Nationalism the rallying cry of the period? Finally what circumstances led to the rise and fall of Black Wall Street(s) across the nation? Through examining these questions, the class will contend with the interconnected history of urban growth and racial animus at the turn of the twentieth century.

This course is appropriate for new students.