African American History: From the African Coast to the Civil War

The history of the United States is inextricably linked to the terrible legacy of slavery. Even before the colonies revolted against England and were consolidated into a nation, enslaved Africans were a crucial part of the story. The legacies of slavery and abolition are still felt keenly today as African Americans have faced significant obstacles to obtaining the fundamental rights of freedom and citizenship. The consistent struggle among African Americans to gain their human rights lives at the heart of the American experiment in democracy.

The story of the Black freedom struggle begins in the colonial and antebellum eras when the vast majority of African Americans lived as enslaved people. A rigorous look at these times reveals vital facts that run contrary to many common conceptions of the past:

• We tend to think of the Northern United States as a region that was opposed to slavery, but in fact, slavery was first made legal in Massachusetts. New England was long a thriving hub of the trade in humans, and free African Americans faced extreme anti-Black violence in the North throughout the era of slavery.
• Far from the passive victims they have often been portrayed as in media and in pro-slavery propaganda, enslaved Africans Americans fought for their freedom from the earliest days of slavery, leveraging the legal system through multiple and ongoing lawsuits contesting the legality of slavery and petitioning for justice and equal treatment under the law.
• During the era of slavery there were numerous armed uprisings by the enslaved against slaveholders, extending from the colonial era through the decades before the Civil War.
• What finally gave victory to the Union in the Civil War was not Northern military successes, but the collapse of the Confederacy due to the mass exodus of enslaved African Americans from their places of forced labor.

In African American History: From the African Coast to the Civil War, you’ll take a deep and penetrating look at the role that African Americans have played in building our nation and in the unfolding of the American democratic system. Taught by esteemed historian Professor Leslie Alexander of Rutgers University, these 24 engrossing lectures bring to light incisive and highly revealing perspectives on African Americans and their integral participation in our national life across 400 years.

As you will see, no understanding of the United States and its history could be remotely complete without an appreciation of the lives, the contribution, and the historical challenges of African Americans.

Lives of Severe Hardship and Fierce Commitment

You’ll begin your look at the long era of slavery with an examination of how people from Western Africa were sold into bondage by European powers, and the unspeakable inhumanity of the transatlantic trade in humans and the slavery system in North America. As a central feature of the course, you’ll learn how enslaved African Americans lived under that system.

But there are two other major themes to explore, which bring alive the extraordinary richness and complexity of this story. First, you’ll discover how enslaved African Americans created meaningful lives in the face of their circumstances, retaining and assimilating their cultural heritage, resisting the oppression of slaveholders, and creating a myriad of ways to cope and endure in the face of enslavement. Secondly, you’ll vividly witness how African Americans, both enslaved and free, worked tirelessly for liberty and justice throughout the entire era of enslavement, making use of every available resource—political, legal, intellectual, theological, and social—in an unending pursuit of freedom and human rights.

Owing to its treatment of slavery and racism, this course contains material that some may find shocking. Professor Alexander does not shy away from the truth, describing the suffering and hardships that African Americans have endured without looking away. Through the story of their enslavement and unrelenting battle for freedom, she demonstrates, with tremendous poignancy, how African Americans held this nation’s feet to the flames—compelling US citizens to come to grips with the country’s founding principles of liberty and equality.

A Crucible of Rights and Justice

A magnetic storyteller, Professor Alexander delivers the lectures as a multilayered historical narrative, leading from the origins of the European trade in humans in the 15th century to the harrowing events of the 1860s, when the conflicts surrounding slavery erupted into civil war. Within this epic story, you’ll explore:

• The American System of Slavery. Across six lectures, investigate the complex civilizations of West Africa, the rise of European expansionism, the origins of the transatlantic trade in humans, the brutality and inhumanity of the slave trade, the horrors of the sea journey of the enslaved to the Americas, and how slavery took root in colonial American society.
• Living in the Face of Bondage. Learn how enslaved Africans endured through maintaining their culture and religious practices, traditional medicine, music, dance forms, and through developing new kinds of social bonds; travel into enslaved life on rural plantations; and take stock of the horrific cruelty as well as the legal disenfranchisement that undergirded the slavery system.
• The Culture of Resistance. Assess the spectrum of ways in which enslaved Africans worked against the system of enslavement, such as bringing and winning “freedom suits” in courts, setting legal precedents against slavery, mounting armed rebellions, developing a “liberation theology,” deceiving and undermining slaveholders, protecting each other from harm, and more.
• An Imperfect Freedom. Examine how emancipation took place in the North and study its aftermath; learn how newly thriving Black communities were stymied by pervasive white hostility, restriction of economic opportunity, denial of voting rights, and significant violence, leading to movements of Black nationalism and emigration.
• Abolition and the Abolitionists. Follow the work of both Black and white abolitionists in the antislavery movements that grew in the antebellum era; learn how Black activists used the power of the written word to critically influence the current of opinion; and study the work of Black abolitionists David Walker, Maria Stewart, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and others.
• The Fracturing of a Nation. Relive the deepening economic and political controversies over slavery that bitterly divided the North and South; learn about the role of the Union’s Black soldiers in turning the tide of the Civil War; assess the draft-related mob violence against Black people in New York City, and the effects of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Breaking the Chains

Throughout African American History: From the African Coast to the Civil War, Professor Alexander brings rich dimensions to the narrative by her detailed evocation of historical moments and exploration of individual lives. Within the lectures, you’ll hear the stories of:

• the capture and enslavement of future activist Olaudah Equiano;
• the guerilla army of colonial-era freedom fighter Colonel Tye;
• the legal battle of Northern segregation protester Elizabeth Jennings;
• the daring work of passionate abolitionist Henry Highland Garnet;
• the heartrending ordeal of courageous fugitive Margaret Garner;
• the military espionage of legendary activist Harriet Tubman; and many more.

As revealed in these richly informative lectures, the story of African Americans reflects the loftiest ideals, the most troubling challenges, and the gravest wrongs of American society. African American History: From the African Coast to the Civil War reveals the measure of a people of unbreakable spirit, and of the deepest human dimensions of American democracy.