← Back to the Introduction to Ethnic Studies outline The Course Maker
← Introduction to Ethnic Studies outline
Week 6 · Module overview

Week 6 — African American Experiences I: Slavery, Emancipation, and Jim Crow

Introduction to Ethnic Studies Free sample edition

Why this matters

A pre-law student reading the 14th Amendment and a future social worker hearing a family's story of moving north both meet this week's laws on paper and in practice.

In plain language

This chapter follows the law of the United States from the arrival of enslaved Africans at Old Point Comfort, Virginia, in 1619 to the segregated railway cars of the 1940s. You will read a court case that denied Black people citizenship, a proclamation that freed some enslaved people but not others, and three amendments that changed the Constitution. You will meet Jim Crow (the system of laws and customs that kept Black and white Southerners apart and kept Black citizens from voting) and the Great Migration (the movement of millions of Black people out of the South). Along the way you will practice one habit: reading each law for what it did and what it did not do. The week ends with one family's account of leaving the South, read beside the dated record.

  • Already covered: Week 2's racialization; Weeks 4 and 5 on Native nations.
  • This week: slavery, Dred Scott, emancipation, the amendments, Jim Crow, the Great Migration.
  • How they connect: this week reads the laws that held, freed, and separated people.
  • Where we're going next: Week 7, civil rights and Black freedom movements.

Focus

How did law make and unmake slavery and segregation, and how did people answer?

By the end of this module, you should be able to:

  • [ ] say what the Emancipation Proclamation did and did not do
  • [ ] state what the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments did
  • [ ] explain Plessy v. Ferguson as segregation written into law
  • [ ] read the E2 excerpt against the dated record

To-do

Plan your week

  1. Read Chapter 6 (about 35–45 minutes), then the lecture and slides.
  2. Work the lecture tutorial (60–90 minutes).
  3. Try the practice set (15–25 minutes).
  4. Do the workshop (about 90 minutes), the discussion, and the assignment, then the quiz.

This week's checkpoint: explain what the Emancipation Proclamation did and did not do, and why the 13th Amendment was still needed.

You've got this

Take it in order, and ask your instructor if a step snags.

Built with The Course Maker · samples.thecoursemaker.com