Living for the City: Race, Space, and Place in Urban America

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This course explores the development and transformation of African American urban life in the United States from the colonial period to the twenty-first century. Organized chronologically and regionally, it looks at how African Americans reshaped cities across the North, South, and West—from colonial cities to modern metropolises. Topics include urban indigeneities, urban slavery and labor, the Civil War and Reconstruction, the Great Migration, post-war urbanism, the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, deindustrialization and incarceration, and suburbanization. Focusing on race, ethnicity, gender, and inequality, course readings analyze the economic, social, and political realities of Black urban communities, as well as the development of political, cultural, and communal institutions in urban America.