Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement in the USA HI3018-03/05
The course aims to provide a detailed, intensive and thorough examination of Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement.
The course will enable students to develop:
- a close and critical familiarity with a selection of primary and secondary material.
- a detailed appreciation of historiographical issues.
- personal communication skills through discussion.
- skills in integrating primary and secondary material into structured and coherent written work.
Credits
30 Credits
Topics covered
- Course Introduction: Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement – What You Know Now
- The Historiography of Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement
- Brown v. Board of Education, Massive Resistance, and the Little Rock Crisis, 1954-1957
- King’s Early Life, 1929-1955
- The Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955-56
- King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), 1957-60
- King, the Sit-Ins and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC),1960
- King, the Freedom Rides and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), 1960-61
- The Albany Movement Campaign, 1961-1962
- The Birmingham Campaign, 1963
- The March on Washington, 1963.
- The St. Augustine Campaign and the 1964 Civil Rights Act
- The Mississippi Freedom Summer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), 1964
- The Selma Campaign, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and the FBI
- The Chicago Campaign, 1965-66
- The Meredith March against fear and Black Power, 1966.
- King’s Final Years: Vietnam and Economic Justice, 1967-68
- A Contested Hero: Commemorating King
- Course Conclusion: Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement – What You Know Now
Learning outcomes
Students who successfully complete this course will be able to:
- Understand the role played by Martin Luther King in the civil rights movement;
- Describe the changing nature of civil rights between 1955 and 1968 and especially the emergence of mass protest and direct action;
- Scrutinise, analyse and interpret historical documents
- Evaluate the strengths, limitations and meanings of primary sources;
- Demonstrate knowledge of the secondary literature and the main historiographical debates.
- Write a well argued, clearly structured long essay (dissertation) using principally primary sources
Assessment
- HI3018-03 (10,000-word dissertation 100%)
- HI3018-05 Exam (80%), Essay (10%) and Reflective journal and forum posts (10%).
Essential reading
- John A. Kirk, Martin Luther King, Jr (Pearson Longman, 2005)
- John A. Kirk (ed.), Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement: Controversies and Debates (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
- Clayborne Carson (ed.) The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Various editions, originally published 1998).
- Cook, Robert, Sweet Land of Liberty: The African American Struggle for Civil Rights in the Twentieth Century (London: Longman, 1998)
- Fairclough, Adam, Better Day Coming: Blacks and Equality, 1890-2000 (New York: Penguin, 2001)