HIS3082
Dr Brian Kelly
Office: UQ 14.105
b.kelly@qub.ac.uk
ph: 02890.973435
Office Hours: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 12-1pm (by appointment)
Lectures: Tuesdays, 10-11am: LAN G.49
Seminar I: Wednesdays, 12-2pm: PFC 2.14
Seminar II: Thursdays, 10am-12pm: PFC 1.09
After Slavery
Race, Labour and Politics in the Post-Emancipation US South
‘Field Workers’ by the American regionalist painter Thomas Hart Benton, 1945
Introduction
The abolition of slavery in the southern United States raised hopes that a new, more
equitable social order might be built on the ruins of the Confederacy—one that
would deliver freedom and new prosperity to former slaves and a broad section of
the white population excluded from power under the South’s antebellum regime.
Instead, within twelve years of the Confederate surrender white supremacists had
raised themselves to power, and the hopes for substantive change were all but
extinguished. By the mid-1890s, many African-Americans were barred from the
voting booth, ‘separation of the races’ was the law of the land, fierce racial violence
engulfed much of the region, and many blacks and whites found themselves trapped
in a ‘new slavery’. The effects of that reversal lingered long after the end of slavery,
and arguably continue to be felt throughout American society. Making use of the
2
best available new classroom technologies, this module will explore in depth, and as
a historical problem, the persistence of racial inequality in the United States after
slave emancipation.
Learning & Teaching
This module aims to provide you with an understanding of one of the most critical periods
in American history—the decades between slave emancipation and the dramatic social
upheaval that accompanied the First World War. We will be making extensive use of
primary sources—from government documents and private correspondence to
contemporary newspaper and eyewitness accounts, political cartoons, surveillance records,
courtroom and other oral testimony. But in order to make sense of these materials, it will be
necessary that you devote a considerable effort to becoming familiar with the chronology of
and major themes arising in the period under discussion, and that you develop a sense of
how historians have agreed and disagreed in interpreting these issues. Much of your time
will therefore be spent acquainting yourself with the substantial secondary literature in the
field.
The format for teaching on this module will be a weekly lecture and seminar. A seminar can
only work well when all of us come to class fully prepared to take part in discussion—that
means, above all, having completed any assigned reading, but it should also mean that you
set some time aside before each weekly meeting—an hour or so—to gather your thoughts
about the material we will be discussing.
Make it a point to sit down regularly before each weekly seminar: go over your notes; write
down a list of questions for anything that is unclear to you; and bring these notes to seminar
with you.
Intended Learning outcomes
Student performance inevitably varies. But by the end of the semester those of you who
undertake the assigned coursework conscientiously should be able to:

speak and write with fluency about the chronology of and major problems in
southern labour history during the period between 1862 and 1920;

critically evaluate primary documents and understand their importance for
reconstructing the past;

recognize and evaluate interpretive differences in historical writing on the subject;

evaluate the quality of a range of online resources and make regular use of them in
your studies;

plan and implement an extended research project on a centrally related theme.
Required Reading Materials
I have assigned two books as required reading for the semester, and will strongly
recommend that you purchase at least one other. Michael W. Fitzgerald is the author of one
of the best monographs on Reconstruction written in the last quarter century, and as our
basic textbook we will make use of his recent Splendid Failure: Postwar Reconstruction in
the American South (Ivan R. Dee: 2007). C. Vann Woodward (1908-1999) is one of the most
influential historians of the post-Civil War South, and his Origins of the New South, 18771913 is a classic in American historical scholarship.
Hard copies of each of these can be difficult to come by. There are Kindle editions of both
available through amazon uk. Multiple copies of each are available in the McClay Library,
After Slavery Syllabus
2
3
though some are available only on short loan. Limited numbers of new copies are available
online, though you should order these promptly to ensure they arrive in time for classroom
use. Both are available in kindle editions. Used copies of each should be available locally,
and No Alibis Bookstore on Botanic Avenue will stock a limited number of the Foner volume.
Whichever option you decide to go with, please order your classroom textbooks early. All
students enrolled on the module must bring copies of both books to the seminar in Week
Two.
In addition, it is worth purchasing for reference purposes a copy of either Foner’s
Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877, W. E. B. Du Bois’s classic Black
Reconstruction, or Steven Hahn’s A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the
Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration. All three are widely available.
I have done my best to ensure that the rest of the assigned readings are available either
online through JSTOR, QOL, or in multiple copies through the McClay Library (McC).
Please inform me if you have trouble locating materials, as I can sometimes scan short
readings if they are unavailable elsewhere.
Coursework
There will be no written exam in this module. Instead you will be required to complete one
online assignment and two written assignments.
1. Web Assignment
In the first few weeks of the semester, we will devote some of our seminar time to a
discussion of historical research on the web. Coinciding with this, each student will
complete an online assignment on ‘Evaluating Online Resources in History.” The
assignment will be explained in Week Two and must be uploaded onto QOL by Friday,
21 February (Week Three) by 12 noon.
2. Essay
A 2500-3000 word essay on any of the major themes in the After Slavery ‘Online
Classroom’ must be uploaded onto QOL by Friday 28 March (in Week Eight) by 12
noon. The assignment will be explained in Week Four.
3. Research Project
A second paper (4500-5000 words) on a research topic chosen by you in consultation
with the module convener must be uploaded onto QOL by Friday 23 May by 12 noon.
Electronic Submission: All students are required to submit an electronic copy of their
coursework. Your name should not appear on any part of the essay. The electronic copy
must have a completed Assessed Work Cover Sheet stapled to the front.
Assessment
Your final mark will be based on four criteria:
Online Resources Assignment
10%
Essay (2500-3000 words)
30%
Research Project (4500-5000 words)
50%
Seminar Participation
10%
Online Learning
After Slavery Syllabus
3
4
Part of my aim is redesigning this module in recent years is to take full advantage of a range
of useful new online learning and research tools. In the folders set up in QOL, I have
included links to online aids and to online film and video relevant to the module.
Throughout the semester we will be making use of the After Slavery website , co-authored
by my colleagues and I on the After Slavery Project. You will find a listing of additional web
resources elsewhere on the same website.
LECTURE & SEMINAR SCHEDULE: SPRING 2014
Week One: 4 February
Introduction to the Module
Week Two: 11 February
American Slave Emancipation and the Nineteenth-Century World
Week Three: 18 February
The Destruction of the Old Regime
Week Four: 25 February
Black Political Mobilization and the Landowners’ Response
Week Five: 4 March
Gender, Free Labour Imperatives and the Scope of Women’s Freedom
Week Six: 11 March
Redemption for Some
Week Seven: 18 March
After Redemption: Race, Labour and the New Order
Week Eight: 25 March
Populism and Race: Agrarian Interracialism in a ‘White Man’s Country’
Week Nine: 1 April
[Essay Consultations: No Lecture]
Comparative Slave Emancipation, with Visiting ERASMUS Scholar Aline Helg
Week Ten: 29 April
New South Industrialisation: a Region Transformed?
Week Eleven: 6 May
Accommodation and Resistance at the Nadir: the ‘Feasible Limits’ of Black Politics
Week Twelve: 13 May
‘A New Negro to be Reckoned With’: World War I and the Great Migration
After Slavery Syllabus
4