HSTA 111B - American Civil Rights Movement

Credit(s): 3

This course examines the historic background of the civil rights movement in the United States and discusses the events at the core of the movement in the 1950s and 1960s, putting the civil rights movement in the context of US political, social, and economic history. (Fall)

Course Learning Outcomes: Upon completion of the course, students will be able to

Evaluate multiple perspectives to arrive at and articulate a conclusion.
Analyze the historic events from 1865 forward that made a civil rights movement necessary in the United States.
Identify and evaluate the significance of a range of leaders, organizations, events, issues, strategies, achievements, and unfulfilled agendas in the African American “long civil rights movement between the 1920s to present.
Describe and explain the key events in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
Discuss and give examples of the dynamic interplay of international, national, and local power and ideology, as African Americans have broken through barriers to citizenship and expanded the scope of self-determination (or alternatively, how they have coped with setbacks, white resistance, and changing socioeconomic conditions and power relations limiting their freedom).
Discuss and give examples of how leaders, organizations, and local activists have understood and acted upon related issues of civil rights and economic justice, education, jobs, physical violence, public welfare, Voting, public and private economic power.
Demonstrate concretely your understanding of how race, class, and gender have structured freedom movements and the social, cultural, economic and political contexts that inform these movements.