Splash Biography

This class will look at the way slavery and race have played a central role in shaping politics in the United States. Particular focus will be paid to the link between slavery and Reconstruction and the politics of the 1980's under Reagan, Bush, and Clinton, and how the politics of the 1980's still heavily influences us today.

This course will look at the way fugitive slaves and violent and non-violent resistance by Black communities helped fuel the political crisis that led to the Civil War. Instead of a story about prominent white abolitionists and white politicians shaping history, you will learn about they ways Black men and women in cities across the country took matters into their own hands to influenced events in Washington.

From Richard Nixon to Bill Clinton, politics in the second half of the 20th century can only be properly understood by looking at race. But more than just a reaction to the Civil Rights movement the roots of racial politics of this era can be directly traced back to slavery and the racial attitudes and prejudices that developed out of that institution. This class will focus on the ways which slavery affected the politics of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton.

The history of the abolition movement tends to focus on white male abolitionists and on events that took place after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850. However, female and male black abolitionists and escaped slaves engaged in both creative non-violent and violent resistance to the Slave Power in the decades before 1850. This class will focus on the actions of these men and woman.