FYS 20 Emancipation: Black Freedom in the Making
The emancipation of four million enslaved people during the US Civil War marked the largest scale abolition of slavery in the Western Hemisphere. This unprecedented social and political revolution was accomplished not only by elite politicians and generals but also by millions of emancipated African Americans. Historian Barbara Jeanne Fields wrote, “freedom was no fixed condition but a constantly moving target.” Building on traditions of resistance established under chattel slavery, freedpeople struggled to make freedom a reality along many dimensions, including bodily sovereignty, land, labor, intimate relations, family integrity, education, and citizenship. In this class, we will immerse ourselves in primary historical documents—including letters, military reports, petitions, and newspapers—seeking to understand how African Americans pursued their vision of freedom from wartime through Reconstruction. We will also take the “long view,” as the poet Langston Hughes put it, to examine the legacies of emancipation as seen from our contested present. At the end of the course, students will participate in a social justice project. This course is part of the Humanities for Just Communities curriculum. Open only to first-year frosh.