This course is a survey of the experiences (social, legal, economic, cultural) of Africans and persons of African descent who resided in British North America (later the United States) from the period 1620 to 1850.
Lead Scholar: Brenda E. Stevenson, UCLA
Master Teacher: Keisha Rembert
Image: Photograph of Sojourner Truth, 1864. (The Gilder Lehrman Institute, GLC06391.20)
Up to 24 PD Hours
This course is a survey of the experiences (social, legal, economic, cultural) of Africans and persons of African descent who resided in British North America (later the United States) from the period 1620 to 1850. The course will flow primarily in a chronological fashion, beginning with the African slave trade and then moving on to colonial settlement, the development of slave societies, the American Revolution, the move westward, antebellum America, and abolition reform efforts of the early nineteenth century.
Optional Book Talk: If you are interested in Professor Stevenson’s scholarship but want to take a different course at the Teacher Symposium, you may attend her book talk on What Sorrows Labour in My Parent’s Breast: A History of the Enslaved Black Family (Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2023). Symposium participants attending the optional book talks can earn additional PD credit.
“Reading the Emancipation Proclamation” by H. W. Herrick, published by Lucius Stebbins, Hartford, CT, 1864. (The Gilder Lehrman Institute, GLC07595)
Brenda E. Stevenson is an internationally recognized scholar of gender, race , family, slavery, and racial conflict. At UCLA, where she has spent most of her career, she serves as the inaugural Nickoll Family Endowed Professor of History and professor of African American studies. These past three years, she served as the inaugural Hillary Rodham Clinton Chair of Women’s History at St. John’s College, the University of Oxford. Her published works include Life in Black and White: Family and Community in the Slave South, The Contested Murder of Latasha Harlins: Justice, Gender, and the Origins of the Los Angeles Riots, and What Is Slavery? along with multiple edited volumes and articles on women, race, family, film, and art. Her latest monograph, What Sorrows Labour in My Parent’s Breast?: A History of the Enslaved Black Family was published last year. The sixth edition of her co-written Through Women’s Eyes: An American History with Documents was issued in January 2024 by Macmillan Learning.
Stevenson’s publications have garnered numerous awards, including the James Rawley Book Prize, the Ida B. Wells Barnett Award, and the Gustavus Meyer Book Prize. Her research has been supported by, among others, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Ford and Mellon Foundations, the American Association of University Women, the Center for Advanced Study (Stanford), the National Humanities Center, and the American Academy in Berlin. She has been appointed by President Biden to serve on the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Review Board.
Keisha Rembert is the 2019 Illinois History Teacher of the Year. She is passionate about anti-racism and equity in schools. Currently, Keisha is a doctoral student and an assistant professor of teacher preparation at National Louis University. Prior to entering teacher education, she spent more than fifteen years teaching middle school English and US History in the Chicagoland area. She is the 2019 recipient of the National Council for Teachers of English (NCTE) Award for Outstanding Middle-Level English Educator.