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The South in Black and White:
Southern History, Culture and Politics in the 20th Century
Spring 2011
Tuesday 6:15-8:45, basement auditorium
Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, 1317 W. Pettigrew, Durham.
“If, in moving through your life, you find yourself lost, go back to the last place where you knew who you were,
and what you were doing, and start from there.”
--Bernice Johnson Reagon
"The past is never dead. It isn't even past."
--William Faulkner
Mary D. Williams
Adjunct professor, Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University
mdwms@duke.edu, 919.616.5484
Tim Tyson
Senior Research Scholar, Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University
timothybtyson@gmail.com, 919.660-3679
Blair LM Kelley
Associate Professor of History, North Carolina State University
blmkelley@ncsu.edu, 919.513.2225
Theo Luebke, Duke Divinity School, theoluebke@gmail.com
Jennifer Dixon, UNC Department of History, ojdixon@gmail.com
Shane Cruise, NCSU, sncruise@ncsu.edu
Office hours: Tuesday afternoons, 4:00-6:00, Wednesday afternoons 2:30-4:30
Course Format
“The South in Black and White” is a lecture and discussion course open to students at
Duke, NC State, NCCU, and UNC and also to the larger community. This is intended to be
public education in the largest sense, education about public and civic life conducted as an
expression of public and civic life. This course will constitute a front porch on Southern
history, politics and culture, where we will join those whom Zora Neale Hurston calls “the big
picture talkers” and hear their stories. We meet Tuesday evenings from 6:15 to 8:45 in the
basement auditorium of the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. There will
be music, poetry, history, documents, stories and opportunities for discussion. We will
entertain visitors—activists, musicians, scholars and writers. We will explore a history as rich
and complicated, painful and delightful as the South itself.
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Texts
The unusual breadth of the course makes a “quilt” model—something useful and
beautiful, patched together from many fabrics by a community—the most appealing and
practical approach to readings. Other articles and the syllabus will be available on the course
website. These texts are at the Regulator Bookshop on Ninth Street in Durham. There are
also copies at PackBackers Books on Western Blvd. in Raleigh.
Kelley, Right to Ride: Streetcar Boycotts and African American Citizenship in the Age
of Plessy v. Ferguson.
Oshinsky, Worse than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice.
Tyson, Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power.
Mc Guire, At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape and Resistance.
Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi
Freedom Struggle.
Tyson, Blood Done Sign My Name
Penner and Ferdinand, Overcoming Katrina: African American Voices from the
Crescent City and Beyond.
Roberts, Roberts, Lessin and Deal, “Trouble the Water,” (DVD)
Assignments, Expectations and Grading
Students will be expected to attend all class meetings. This is especially true for a class
that only meets 13 times. Please do not forget to sign in so that you can get credit.
Participation will include attendance, engagement in discussions, and occasional in-class written
responses. In-class written responses will answer a question drawn from the reading. They
will not be formally graded, but will be reviewed for your participation grade.
Your participation grade accounts for 20 per cent of the final grade. A take-home essay
that weaves together themes from all of the readings will be distributed on March 15 and due
on March 22; these essays will account for 20 per cent of the final grade. An in-class midterm,
composed of short answer and multiple-choice questions, given on March 1, will account for
20 per cent. A short research and analysis assignment (see below) due on April 5 will account
for 15 per cent. The final exam will require both objective mastery of the factual material and
an in-class essay, and will account for the remaining 25 per cent of the final grade.
Music
Mrs. Mary D. Williams, adjunct professor at the CDS and one of the best gospel singers
in the country, is a key part of the teaching team. Every week we will open our time together
with music. Mrs. Williams will perform songs and also teach us songs. By running this music
through our bodies, we immerse ourselves in Southern culture, much the same as we do by
reading history or poetry. Please focus when the music begins. Please note: These songs are as much
a text for the course as any of the readings and the exams will reflect that fact.
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Course Schedule
January 18: Organizational meeting. Culture of the Enslaved and Origins of Jim Crow
January 25: 1898 and Its Legacy
Assigned reading: “Ghosts of 1898: Wilmington’s Race Riot and the Rise of White
Supremacy,” News & Observer, November 17, 2006. Glenda E. Gilmore, “Murder,
Memory and the Flight of the Incubus” and “Abraham Galloway,” in Cecelski and
Tyson, Democracy Betrayed; Albert Raboteau, Slave Religion: The ‘Invisible Institution’
in the Antebellum South, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 211-321;
Timothy B. Tyson, “Culture and Creolization: The World the Slaves Made.” All
available on course website. Film: “Ethnic Notions.”
Supplementary reading: Glenda Gilmore, Gender and Jim Crow, 61-146, David S.
Cecelski and Timothy B. Tyson, eds. Democracy Betrayed: The Wilmington Race Riot
of 1898 and Its Legacy; H. Leon Prather, “We Have Taken A City”.
February 1: Segregation and Dissent
Assigned reading: Kelley, Right to Ride, all. Elsa Barkley Brown and Gregg Kimball,
“Mapping the Terrain of Black Richmond,” Journal of Urban History, Vol. 21, No. 3
(March 1995): 296-346. Available on course website.
Supplementary reading: David Fort Godshalk, Veiled Visions: The Atlanta Race Riot
and the Reshaping of American Race Relations; Ann Field Alexander, Race Man: Rise
and Fall of the “Fighting Editor,” John Mitchell, Jr.; David Levering Lewis, W.E.B. Du
Bois: The Biography of a Race, 1868-1919.
February 8: Chain Gangs, Prison Farms, and Jim Crow Justice
Assigned reading: Oshinsky, Worse than Slavery, all.
Supplementary reading: Paul Ortiz, Emancipation Betrayed; Mary Ellen Curtin, Black
Prisoners and Their World: Alabama, 1865-1900; Douglas A. Blackmon, Slavery By
Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World
War II; Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow.
February 15: Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow
Assigned reading: Tyson, Radio Free Dixie, 1-25; Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom,
1-28; William H. Chafe, “The Gods Bring Threads to Webs Begun,” Journal of
American History, 86, No. 4 (March 2000): 1531-1551. Available on course website.
Also read “What Was Segregation? at http://www.ferris.edu/JIMCROW/what.htm.
Tour the website at www.withoutsanctuary.org. Warning: website disturbing but essential.
Supplementary reading: Leon Litwack, Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age
of Jim Crow; John Egerton, Speak Now Against the Day: The Generation Before The
Civil Rights Movement in the South; Patricia Sullivan, Days of Hope, especially 11-168.
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February 22: Worlds at War: World War II, the Cold War, and the Land of Cotton
Assigned reading: Tyson, Radio Free Dixie, 26-136; Robin D. G. Kelley, “We Are Not
What We Seem,” Journal of American History 80, No. 1 (June 1993): 75-112, available
on course website. Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom, 29-102; Mary Dudziak,
“Brown as a Cold War Case,” Journal of American History, Vol. 91, No. 1 (June 2004):
32-42. Available on website and at http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3659611.pdf
Supplementary reading: For World War II, see Neil Wynn, The African American
Experience during World War II and its extensive bibliography. For the Cold War, see
Mary Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights; Thomas Borstelman, The Cold War and the
Color Line; Gilmore, Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919-1950.
March 1: Montgomery Bus Boycott Reconsidered
Assigned reading: Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters, 120-205; Danielle McGuire, “At
the Dark End of the Street,” chapters 1-5.
In-class midterm on all material thus far.
Midterm take-home essay question distributed. Due March 22.
Supplementary reading: David Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 11-82; Jo Ann Robinson,
The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women who Started It; Rosa Parks, My Story.
March 15: The Sit-in Movement and the Freedom Rides, and the March on Washington:
SNCC, CORE, and the Rise and the Limits of Nonviolent Direct Action
Assigned reading: Tyson, Radio Free Dixie, 137-308. “Bernice Johnson Reagon: The
Singing Warrior,” 1-19, available on website; King, “Letter from Birmingham Jail,”
http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/popular_requests/ “I Have a Dream” on
http://www.americanrhetoric.com.
Supplementary reading: Raymond Arsenault, Freedom Riders; William H. Chafe,
Civilities and Civil Rights. Glen Eskew, But for Birmingham; Diane McWhorter, Carry
Me Home; Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters; Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC
and the Black Awakening of the 1960s; Wesley Hogan, Many Minds, One Heart:
SNCC’s Dream for a New America.
March 22: Mississippi and the Movement
Assigned reading: Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom, 103-316. Note: research
assignment due. In class: Film: “Freedom on My Mind.”
Midterm take-home essay due at beginning of class. No late midterms accepted.
Supplementary reading: John Dittmer, Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in
Mississippi; Sally Belfrage, Freedom Summer; Doug McAdam, Freedom Summer;
Emilye Crosby, A Little Taste of Freedom: The Black Freedom Struggle in Claiborne
County, Mississippi.
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March 29: Black Power from the Grassroots:
Assigned reading: Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom, 317-412; McGuire 174-233.
Please review Radio Free Dixie, especially 1-3, 189-219 and 287-307 and also Blood
Done Sign My Name. Also, listen to President Lyndon Baines Johnson, “We Shall
Overcome,” on http://www.americanrhetoric.com
Supplementary reading: Hasan Jeffries, Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power
in Alabama’s Black Belt; Peniel Joseph, Waitin’ Til The Midnight Hour; William Van
Deburg, New Day in Babylon.
April 5: Blood Done Sign Our Names
Assigned reading: Tyson, Blood Done Sign My Name, all. Please note that tonight’s class
will last about an hour longer than usual. Mike Wiley will perform his play, “Blood Done
Sign My Name.” Location TBA.
Research assignment due.
April 12: Katrina: Flooded by History
Assigned reading: Penner and Ferdinand, Overcoming Katrina; Melissa Harris
Lacewell, “Do you Know What It Means…Mapping Emotion in the Aftermath of
Katrina,” Souls, Vol. 9, No. 1 (2007), available on course website. Watch DVD, Tia
Lessin and Carl Deal, “Trouble the Water.”
Supplementary film and reading: Spike Lee, “When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in
Four Acts,” DVD; Douglas Brinkley, The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New
Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast; Natasha Trethewey, Beyond Katrina: A
Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
April 19: Look Away Toward a New South: Class, Race, Immigration, and Re-segregation
Assigned reading: To Be Announced
Supplementary reading: Paul Cuadros, A Home on the Field; Gerald Grant, Hope and
Despair in the American City: Why There Are No Bad Schools in Raleigh; John Charles
Boger and Gary Orfield, eds., School Resegregation: Must the South Turn Back?
April 26: Where do we go from here?
FINAL EXAM: TBA
FINAL POTLUCK BARBECUE: TBA
Course Website
Make sure we get your email right away and we will send you an invitation that you can
click on and go straight onto the Wordpress website.
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Notes and Suggestions
Like physics or Shakespeare, historical understanding requires a great deal of hard labor,
some of it boring memorization, like learning the table of elements for a Chemistry class, and
other parts quiet contemplation, energetic debate, and moments of revelation. This class will
repay your labors by making the world (and your mind) a more interesting place to be, but it is
a demanding discipline. Do not expect this to be an easy class. The reading load is heavy,
which is the nature of history and culture. You should always do the reading before the class for
which it is assigned. In-class writing exercises will require you to have done the reading. Not
doing the reading will cause you to do poorly on exams and get less from the course.
Please seek assistance from the teaching team at any time. We want you to enjoy and to
benefit from this course, and welcome your questions, suggestions, or concerns. If questions
are about the subject matter of the course, we encourage you to ask them in class, since your
classmates will also benefit, but by all means ask. In a class our size, with our range of
students, any question that springs to your mind will be in the minds of several of your
classmates; you should ask questions as much for them as for yourself. This will help your
participation grade, too.
Students are responsible for all material covered in the course, whether it is a film, a
lecture, a song, a play or a reading. The lectures build upon rather than duplicate the readings,
so it is important to keep up. It will also be impossible to pass the in-class written responses
without having done the readings.
Please note that class will meet for a longer period on April 5. Mark your schedule now.
Woody Allen once said, “eighty per cent of success is showing up.” It is important that
you attend class meetings. If you miss class, please get notes from someone in the class.
Never hesitate to raise your hand and offer a brief question or a comment during
lecture; in fact, the success of this course depends upon your willingness to do so. We may
even call on you. Please do not feel that we are picking on you; we intend no disrespect
whatsoever. This is intended to be a democratic conversation.
If you are not actually participating in the class session—asking a question, making a
comment—please use good manners and do not disturb me or your classmates by chatting,
reading the newspaper, etc. Please turn off your cell phone before class. Please do not
open your laptop during class; take notes in a notebook. As long as you do not disrupt
class or distract the instructor, please be at your liberty.
Short Research Assignment
Note due date: Tuesday, March 29. Please FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS
CAREFULLY. Got questions? Please ask them in class so that I can respond to the whole
class at once; many people will have the same questions or will be glad that someone else
thought to ask.
When Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968, more than a hundred
American cities burst into flame. Washington, D.C. witnessed 700 cases of arson that night.
U.S. Army units in full combat gear took battle positions around the White House; the Capitol
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was ringed with barbed wire and machine gun nests. King’s murder marked the nation as
deeply as his life.
One purpose of this research assignment is to help us figure out what happened across
the United States in the wake of the King assassination and what it meant for the country. A
second point of this exercise is to allow you to look at the kinds of sources historians use to
write about the past and to try your own hand at the historian’s craft. This will give you a more
sophisticated understanding of what you read in history books. This is not a full-blown
research paper and should only take you a few hours.
Here’s what you do. Go find at least two accounts of what happened after Dr. King’s
assassination. We suggest that you try to use your hometown newspaper as one of the sources,
though it is not absolutely necessary, if you have trouble finding it at the library or simply
prefer a different one. For the other source, you may be at your liberty. We will reward
particularly obscure or interesting sources. (Was there a riot in Salt Lake City, Utah? Did
fraternities at Notre Dame celebrate? You tell me.) Get at least two written sources,
preferably on events in the same place. Magazines, newsletters from labor unions or churches,
letters, editorials, radical Black Power publications or the local Republican Party or the
women’s tea circle, as long as it is someone responding to the assassination or its aftermath.
The more interesting, the better. Any place you like is fine. PHOTOCOPY THE ARTICLES,
MARKING THE NAME OF THE PAPER, THE DATE AND PAGE NUMBER ON THE
CLIPPING, AND STAPLE IT TO YOUR PAPER. PUT YOUR NAME ON THE
ARTICLES, TOO.
You can also use one oral source, if you like: your own memory, if you are old enough
to remember the King assassination, might be one. Better still, you could call and interview an
older friend or relative—someone old enough to remember what was happening—and then
read the newspaper of the town they describe to you. You could ask them for other people to
call and interview. You could try to interview someone with a particularly interesting point of
view or one whose testimony might connect in some way with your written source.
Your paper should only be two or three pages long—900 words at most. You do not
need to compose a full written account of what happened in Amarillo or Evanston or Hanging
Dog. Summarize in one or two paragraphs what generally happened. Then discuss in an
informal way what we might be able to learn from the sources you have examined. Is there
anything about the news coverage that strikes you as odd or revealing or engaging? Finally,
write a closing paragraph or so about what the enduring meaning of these events might be—
what you might focus on if you were a historian writing a book about the King assassination’s
effect on America.
We will discuss the various things we have learned about history and historical sources
from doing this assignment. I think you’ll find it really interesting in the end, and we will have
created an archive of sorts, and in future years of this course it can be expanded and used as a
resource for still deeper understandings.