Final Exam Review - Spring 2026 African American History

Final Exam Logistics and Schedule

The Spring $2026$ Final Exam is scheduled for Wednesday, May $20$, from $11:00\text{AM}$ to $1:00\text{PM}$. The examination will take place in Curtin Hall $175$.

Course Readings: Part 1 - Beginnings

• Martha Biondi: The Black Revolution on Campus, $1^{st}$ ed. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, $2012$ (Introduction and Chapter $1$). Refer to lecture notes for supplemental details.

• Franklin and Higginbotham (2021): From Slavery to Freedom, Chapter $1$: "Ancestral Africa," pp. $1$-$23$.

• Olaudah Equiano and Daniel S. Jenkins: The Life of Olaudah Equiano, or, Gustavus Vassa, the African / Written by Himself. Boston: I. Knapp, $1837$ (Section II: Enslavement).

• Franklin and Higginbotham: From Slavery to Freedom, Chapter $3$: "Establishing North American Slavery," pp. $50$-$69$.

Key Words and Concepts: Part 1 - Beginnings

• Societal Structures and Trade: Bantu, Bantu expansion, iron-working societies, trans-Saharan trade, Mansa Musa, Askia Muhammed, West African empires (Ghana, Mali, Songhay), centralized versus de-centralized (acephalous) ruling.

• Cultural and Economic Systems: Bridewealth, forms of bondage, the role of Islam in West Africa.

• Slavery and Legal Frameworks: Trans-Atlantic slave trade, Slave Codes, manumission, Bacon’s Rebellion, Code Noir, slave patrols, Dutch half-freedom, Olaudah Equiano.

• Ideology and Race: Assimilation, integration, multiculturalism, Brown v. Board of Education, Black Studies, radicalization, ‐Africa has no history‐ concept, the Hoffman extinction thesis, Jesse Owens, the social construct of race.

Study Questions: Part 1 - Beginnings

Black Studies and Academic Ideology

• What were the specific processes and motivations that led to the creation of Black Studies programs on U.S. college campuses?

• What new ideologies emerged out of the student drive for Black Studies, and from where did they take their inspiration?

Ancestral African Societies

• What is known about the organization and values of ancestral African societies?

• What were the forces that shaped these civilizations?

• What specific evidence allows us to gain an understanding of these societies?

• How has African life over the centuries been shaped by trade, migration, and contacts with various societies?

• How have slavery and slave trade systems been integrated into African history?

North American Slavery and Racial Construction

• What were the roles of the initial Africans in North America?

• What variations existed in Slave Codes across different colonies?

• What was the status of the first Africans compared to white indentured servants?

• What is the relationship between genetic variability and the concept of race?

• How did laws and social mores impact the lives of enslaved individuals?

Course Readings: Part 2 - Slave Era Life and Reconstruction

• Frederick Douglass (2019 [1845]): Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: Special Bicentennial Edition, $1^{st}$ ed. New York: G&D Media.

• White, Bay, and Martin (2017): Freedom on My Mind, Second edition, Chapter $6$: "The Northern Black Freedom Struggle and the Coming of the Civil War."

• Anthea Butler: "Church" in The 1619 Project (Nikole Hannah-Jones et al.), $1^{st}$ ed. New York: One World, $2021$. ($25$ pages).

• Franklin and Higginbotham: From Slavery to Freedom, Chapter $11$: "Reconstruction," pp. $263$-$294$.

Key Words and Concepts: Part 2 - Slave Era Life and Reconstruction

• Figures and Resistance: Frederick Douglass, Harriet Bailey, Mr. Covey, Aunt Hester, Oney Judge, Robert Smalls, abolitionism, slave resistance, found family.

• Political and Legal Shifts: Emancipation Proclamation, Reconstruction (Radical Reconstruction versus Presidential Reconstruction), Hayes-Tilden Compromise, Reconstruction Amendments ($13^{th}$, $14^{th}$, $15^{th}$ equivalents), Black Codes, Freedman’s Bureau, sharecropping.

• Institutional and Spiritual Life: Black Churches, Black liberation theology, jeremiad, James Cone, Richard Allen, African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church.

• Groups and Economic Shifts: Red Shirts, KKK (Ku Klux Klan), cotton gin, Louisiana Purchase.

Study Questions: Part 2 - Slave Era Life and Reconstruction

Resistance and Community Building

• How did African Americans respond to the varied conditions of the colonial and antebellum periods?

• What was the nature of the diversity in conditions for enslaved people across the various texts?

• How did African Americans (both enslaved and free) build community and institutions between the early $1600s$ and $1865$?

The Role of the Black Church

• What have been the changing functions of the Black church across different generations?

• How has the church specifically shaped African American culture, communities, and freedom movements?

• What are the unique ways that African Americans interpreted Christianity?

Frederick Douglass and The Narrative

• How did Douglass perceive the impact of slavery on white individuals and culture?

• What did resistance look like among the enslaved according to Douglass’s depictions?

• How did The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass function as a persuasive anti-slavery text?

• What specific pathways to freedom was Douglass able to seize?

Post-Civil War and Reconstruction

• What actions did African Americans take to reshape their futures during and after the Civil War?

• How did gender roles in labor change during the Reconstruction era?

• What kind of Black educational institutions were developed at the end of slavery?

• What were the opportunities and challenges for former slaves in acquiring land?

Course Readings: Part 3 - Jim Crow Era

• Donald Bogle (2001): Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, & Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films, $4^{th}$ ed., pp. $3$-$18$ and $429$-$433$.

• Franklin and Higginbotham (2021): From Slavery to Freedom, Chapter $13$: "The Era of Self-Help."

• Crystal M. Moten (2016): "'Kept Right On Fighting’…‐ African American Women’s Economic Activism in Milwaukee," Journal of Civil and Human Rights, pp. $33$-$51$.

Key Words and Concepts: Part 3 - Jim Crow Era

• Cultural Stereotypes and Media: Minstrelsy, film stereotypes (mammy, tom, sambo, pickaninny, brute/savage, coon), The Birth of a Nation, The Jazz Singer.

• Legal and Social Frameworks: Jim Crow, Plessy v. Ferguson, racial uplift, the Social Gospel.

• Leaders and Philosophies: Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, Talented Tenth, Anna Julia Cooper, Mary Church Terrell, Madame C.J. Walker, Ida B. Wells.

• Organizations: NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), NACW (National Association of Colored Women), Women’s Club Movement, Tuskegee Institute, Niagara Movement, National Negro Business League, mutual benefit societies, La Circle Club.

• Social and Economic Shifts: The Great Migration, redlining, kitchenette, blockbusting, Federal Housing Administration (FHA), restrictive covenants.

Study Questions: Part 3 - Jim Crow Era

Stereotypes and Cultural Representation

• What is the relationship between slavery, Reconstruction, and the Jim Crow period regarding the proliferation of racist stereotypes?

• What are the sources and societal effects of these stereotypes?

• Why have different guises of these stereotypes (e.g., the Brute or the Mammy) emerged in different historical eras?

• What was the relationship of African American actors to minstrelsy and film/television caricatures?

• How did the Great Migration impact these stereotypes?

Progress and Migration

• What were the competing paths to progress (Booker T. Washington vs. W.E.B. DuBois) in the late $19^{th}$ and early $20^{th}$ centuries?

• What were the underlying philosophies of self-help and racial uplift?

• How did these organizations influence urbanization and entrepreneurship?

• What were the specific push and pull factors of the Great Migration?

• What were the expectations for industrial city life, and how did migration contribute to Black culture?

Milwaukee Case Study

• What did women’s leadership look like in Milwaukee, and what specific challenges did they face?

• How did Milwaukee’s Great Migration experience differ from other cities?

• How did union activism and Black women's activism intersect in the fight for industrial jobs post-WWII?

Course Readings: Part 4 - New Era of Freedom Struggle

• Stephen Stacks (2025): The Resounding Revolution: Freedom Song After 1968, Chapter $4$.

• bell hooks (2001 [1990]): "Homeplace (a Site of Resistance)" in Available Means, p. $383$.

• Treva B. Lindsey (2022): "Say Her Name: Policing is Violence" in America, Goddam, pp. $33$-$60$.

• Ta-Nehisi Coates (2014): "The Case for Reparations," The Atlantic, $313(5): 54-71$.

Key Words and Concepts: Part 4 - New Era of Freedom Struggle

• Urban Policy and Housing: Bronzeville, Urban Renewal, white flight, G.I. Bill, "on contract" mortgages, the wealth gap.

• Social Movements: Modern civil rights movement, Montgomery Bus Boycott, Black Lives Matter, Black Freedom Movement.

• Theoretical Frameworks: Culture of poverty, systemic racism, intersectionality, homeplace.

• Environmentalism and Activism: Environmental justice, Warren County anti-PCB movement, freedom singing.

• Economic Justice: Reparations.

• Economic Trends: Deindustrialization.

Study Questions: Part 4 - New Era of Freedom Struggle

Civil Rights and Structural Inequality

• Based on the video The House We Live In, what gains were made in the civil rights movement and which remained unresolved?

• How do racialized processes in the housing market contribute to life outcome disparities between African Americans and white Americans?

• How is U.S. immigration law linked to racial categorization and its changeability?

• Why did immigrants historically seek to enter as "white" rather than "black"?

The Housing Market and Policy

• How did the FHA change homeownership post-WWII, and what were its limitations?

• What global impact did urban renewal have on African American communities?

• How does Coates define ‐reparations‐ and why does he link the housing market to this concept?

• What are the primary reasons reparations have not been enacted?

Environmental Justice and Memory

• How has African American activism changed the nature of environmentalism since the $1970s$?

• Define the environmental justice movement and how it differs from traditional environmentalism.

• What roles did singing and memory/nostalgia play in the Warren County anti-PCB movement?

Gender and Intersectionality

• How does gender factor into our understanding of state violence against African Americans?

• Why is gender critical to the creation of the "homeplace"?

• What is the importance of the term ‐intersectionality‐?

• What is the legacy of slavery in modern time periods?

• What are the goals of Black Lives Matter and their relation to the broader Black Freedom Movement?

Course Videos for Review

• Race: The Power of an Illusion: "The Difference Between Us" and "The House We Live In" (Post-video discussion led by Jackline).

• Slavery and the Making of America: "The Challenge of Freedom" (Volume $4$).

• Ethnic Notions ($1987$): Directed by Marlon Riggs.

• Goin’ to Chicago: Film documenting the migration patterns and urban experiences.