African American
Studies Study Library.

Introduction to African American Studies as an academic discipline · Diversity of African populations, languages, and cultural groups · Major West African kingdoms: Ghana, Mali, Songhai — trade networks, governance, and global reach · Indigenous African cosmologies, spiritual traditions, and intellectual traditions · Sub-Saharan and East African societies · Global Africans: African presence in Europe, Asia, and the Americas before the transatlantic slave trade · Origins and early mechanisms of the transatlantic slave trade · Establishment of early diasporic African communities in the Americas · Key figures and sources: Mansa Musa, Ibn Battuta accounts, kingdom-era cartographic sources

The transatlantic slave trade: departure zones (Senegambia, Gold Coast, Bight of Benin, Angola), Middle Passage conditions, and mortality · African explorers in colonial America (e.g., Estevanico) · Development of chattel slavery in colonial America: slave codes, legal construction of race, domestic slave trade · Cultural creation under enslavement: language, music, religion, family structures, foodways · Gender narratives: experiences of enslaved women, resistance through motherhood and community · Day-to-day resistance: work slowdowns, sabotage, feigned illness · Organized rebellions: Stono Rebellion (1739), Haitian Revolution (1791), Nat Turner's rebellion (1831), Amistad (1839) · Free Black communities in the North and South: institutions, churches, mutual aid societies · Abolitionist movement: Black and white abolitionists, The North Star, The Liberator, Underground Railroad · Key legal and political events: Dred Scott decision, Compromise of 1850, Kansas-Nebraska Act · Civil War: Black soldiers (54th Massachusetts), Emancipation Proclamation, 13th Amendment · Reconstruction beginnings: Freedmen's Bureau, Black Codes, 13th/14th/15th Amendments · Key figures: Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey, David Walker, Maria Stewart, Harriet Jacobs

Reconstruction era: promise and failure — Black political participation, Freedmen's Bureau, sharecropping, Black Codes · Disenfranchisement mechanisms: Jim Crow laws, poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses · Supreme Court decisions: Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), Civil Rights Cases (1883) · Anti-Black violence: lynching, convict leasing, racial terrorism — Tulsa Race Massacre (1921), Rosewood (1923) · Ida B. Wells and the anti-lynching campaign · Women's leadership: Mary Church Terrell, Anna Julia Cooper, Mary McLeod Bethune · The Great Migration (First Wave, 1910–1940): causes, destinations, urban community formation · The Harlem Renaissance: literature (Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay), visual art (Aaron Douglas, Jacob Lawrence), music (jazz and blues origins) · HBCUs, Black Greek organizations (NPHC founding), and the Black press · Marcus Garvey and the UNIA: Pan-Africanism, Black nationalism, Back to Africa movement · Early NAACP and Urban League: legal strategies, anti-lynching campaigns · Key figures: Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Ida B. Wells, Charles Drew

World War II: Black servicemen, Double V Campaign, Tuskegee Airmen, desegregation of the military (Executive Order 9981, 1948) · Early Civil Rights Movement: Brown v. Board of Education (1954), Montgomery Bus Boycott, sit-ins, Freedom Rides · Civil Rights Act of 1964, Voting Rights Act of 1965, Fair Housing Act of 1968 · Key organizations: SNCC, CORE, SCLC, NAACP Legal Defense Fund · Black Power Movement: Black Panthers platform and community programs, Black Arts Movement, cultural nationalism · Black feminist thought: Angela Davis, bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Combahee River Collective, intersectionality theory (Kimberlé Crenshaw) · African diaspora connections: Pan-Africanism, decolonization movements in Africa and the Caribbean · African American contributions to popular culture: R&B, soul, funk, hip-hop; sports (Muhammad Ali, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, Jackie Robinson); film and television · Science, medicine, and technology contributions: Charles Drew, Daniel Hale Williams, Mae C. Jemison, Katherine Johnson · Afrofuturism as cultural and intellectual framework · Mass incarceration, policing, and criminal justice — contemporary debates · Black Lives Matter movement and contemporary activism (post-2013) · Contemporary debates: reparations, affirmative action, representation in media and politics · Key figures: MLK Jr., Malcolm X, Fannie Lou Hamer, Thurgood Marshall, Ella Baker, Angela Davis, Stokely Carmichael, bell hooks, Kimberlé Crenshaw