HST 144 - Introduction to History: Music/Civil Rights Movement

Course unit(s): 1
Meets GAR: Meets general academic requirement HU.
African American activism and agitation for racial equality profoundly impacted the social, political, and cultural histories of the United States. This course will introduce students to the history of the black freedom struggle with particular focus on the years between 1954 and 1968. African American musical expression during the years under consideration in this course offers a particularly powerful lens through which to examine the issues, events, and individuals of the period. Although music has been an essential element of the struggle since coded field songs were used to transmit information among the slave communities, it took on a more overtly activist tenor during the Modern Civil Rights Movement. No longer shrouded in code, music forthrightly declared its clear intention of rallying support and inspiring specific strategies and tactics to overcome Jim Crow. The music of folk artists like the Freedom Singers, Bernice Johnson Reagon, and Odetta will be included but particular emphasis will be given to the works of jazz artists such as John Coltrane, Nina Simone, Max Roach, and Thelonius Monk. Music will be played, discussed, and analyzed during each class period.