Black Intellectual History and Ideology

Afro-Am 604 [691B], UMass/Amherst
Spring 2000, 302 New Africa House
T 9:00-11:30, Prof. Ernest Allen

This course covers most of the principal currents of black intellectual history and ideology from the early 19th through the late 20th centuries.

Themes of assimilation, nationalism, black feminism, civil and political rights, religion, and international perspectives will be explored in some depth. We shall be particularly interested in the structural and thematic patterns which emerge as we study diverse ideas of African Americans ranging over a century and a half.

Each student will be responsible for leading at least one discussion, and probably two (depending on class size). A 25-page final paper addressing the principal themes covered in all the readings is due at the end of the course.

Reading Schedule

February 1: Conceptualizing Afro-American Worldviews

Ralph J. Bunche, "Conceptions and Ideologies of the Negro Problem," Contributions in Black Studies 9/10 (1992): 70-114.

August Meier, "The Emergence of Negro Nationalism: A Study in Ideologies," in Along the Color Line, Explorations in the Black Experience, August Meier and Elliott Rudwick (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976), 189-216.

Bernard R. Boxill, "Self-Respect," in Blacks and Social Justice (1984; rvsd. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1992), 186-204.

Axel Honneth, "Integrity and Disrespect: Principles of a Conception of Morality Based on a Theory of Recognition," in The Fragmented World of the Social: Essays in Social and Political Philosophy, ed. Charles W. Wright, (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 247-60.

February 8: 19th-Century Religious and Secular Ideals

Howard Brotz, ed., African-American Social and Political Thought, 1850-1920 (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1992), Intro-331.

February 15:

Robert S. Levine, Martin Delany, Frederick Douglass, and the Politics of Representative Identity (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997).

HOLIDAY (Presidents' Day), Monday, February 21; follow Monday schedule on Wednesday, February 23

February 22:

Brotz, ed., African-American Social and Political Thought, 332-549.

Charles W. Chesnutt, "The Future American," Charles W. Chesnutt: Essays and Speeches, eds. Joseph R. McElrath, Robert C. Leitz III, and Jesse S. Crisler (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 121-36.

T. Thomas Fortune, "The Afro-American League," AME Church Review 7 (July 1890): 2-6.

T. Thomas Fortune, "Who Are We? Afro-Americans, Colored People, or Negroes?," Voice of the Negro 3 (March 1906): 194-98.

T. Thomas Fortune, "Will the Afro-American Return to Africa?," AME Church Review 8 (April 1892): 387-91.

February 29:

August Meier, Negro Thought in America, 1880-1915; Racial Ideologies in the Age of Booker T. Washington (1963).

March 7: 19th-Century Womanist Thought

Deborah Gray White, Too Heavy a Load: Black Women in Defense of Themselves, 1894-1994 (1999).

SPRING RECESS, March 11-19

March 21:

Anna Julia Cooper, The Voice of Anna Julia Cooper: Including A Voice From the South and Other Important Essays, Papers, and Letters, eds. Charles Lemert and Esme Bhan (1998).

March 28: Shirley W. Logan, ed., With Pen and Voice: A Critical Anthology of Nineteenth-Century African-American Women (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1995)

Elsa Barkley Brown, "Womanist Consciousness: Maggie Lena Walker and the Independent Order of Saint Luke," in Black Women in America: Social Science Perspectives, eds. Micheline R. Malson, and others (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 173-96.

Evelyn Brooks, "The Feminist Theology of the Black Baptist Church, 1880-1900," in Class, Race, and Sex: The Dynamics of Control, eds. Amy Swerdlow and Hanna Lessinger (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1983), 31-59.

April 4: Twentieth Century

W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, eds. David W. Blight and Robert Gooding-Williams (Boston: Bedford Books, 1997). GET THIS EDITION.

Ernest Allen, "Du Boisian Double-Consciousness: The Unsustainable Argument" (unpublished, February 1999)

April 11: Politics of the Black Aesthetic, I

Alain LeRoy Locke, The New Negro (1925; rpt. New York: Atheneum, 1975).

Charles W. Scruggs, "Alain Locke and Walter White: Their Struggle for Control of the Harlem Renaissance," Black American Literature Forum 14 (Autumn 1980): 91-99.

HOLIDAY (Patriot's Day), Monday, April 17; follow Monday Class Schedule on Thursday, April 20

April 18: Responses to the Great Depression

James O. Young, Black Writers of the Thirties (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973). [out of print; on reserve]

April 25: Afro-American Nationalism, 1920s-1990s

Brotz, ed., African-American Social and Political Thought, 553-76

William L. Van Deburg, ed., Modern Black Nationalism: From Marcus Garvey to Louis Farrakhan, (New York: New York University Press, 1997).

May 2: International Perspectives, 1930s-1960s

Brenda Gayle Plummer, Rising Wind: Black Americans and U.S. Foreign Affairs, 1935-1960 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996).

May 9: Politics of the Black Aesthetic, II

Jerry Gafio Watts, Heroism and the Black Intellectual: Ralph Ellison, Politics, and Afro-American Intellectual Life (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994).

Irving Howe, "Black Boys and Native Sons," Dissent 10 (Autumn 1963): 353-68.

Ralph Ellison, "The World and the Jug," New Leader (December 9, 1963).

Irving Howe, "A Reply to Ralph Ellison," New Leader 47 (February 3, 1964): 12-14.

Ralph Ellison, "A Rejoinder" [to Irving Howe], New Leader 47 (February 3, 1964): 15-22.

LAST DAY OF CLASSES: Thursday, May 11