I could not have predicted the events that have punctuated the 2014-2015 school year when I opted to teach a course on the history of Jim Crow and race relations in America at a predominantly white liberal arts institution. The deaths of two black men at the hands of police were resounding punctuation marks. The shooting of Michael Brown was a question mark, spurring a depth of engagement with the course material and a profound sense of urgency to understand how race relations in America had reached such a crescendo while so many Americans thought we were in a post-racial era. The death of Freddie Gray at the end of the academic year served as an ellipses…a mark that the discussion and study must continue. In this course that was designed as an introduction to the study of history, there would be no neat resolution to this semester’s studies. No easy conclusions or triumphal narratives of overcoming racial strife in America. This year would revise the idea of what it means to study history.
I opted to teach this course on Jim Crow as an introduction to history course because I thought the subject provided a great window into some of the norms of the history. It’d be an object lesson in constructions. Students would learn that race is a construct and observe its construction and reconstruction in various historical moments and places. We would use a plethora of primary sources, allowing students to become historians themselves, creating histories of the development of race relations in America. In so doing, they would have to grapple with the specific contours of place and time. Students would grapple with understanding and getting into the minds of white abolitionists of the 19th century, black activists, teachers and civil servants of the early 20th century, white supremacist politicians of the 1930s and so on. They would come to understand ideas about change over time and continuity through the various iterations of race relations from the end of slavery and the efforts to recreate slavery-like conditions through black codes, convict leasing and debt peonage. The would also have the opportunity to engage historians’ concerns about the temporal specificity of the past when compared to the present. Ideally, they would come away with a nuanced perspective on the idea that history repeats itself by reading Michele Alexander’s The New Jim Crow in which she uses a historical reference to help interpret the present conditions. She points out that there are important similarities between the old an the New Jim Crow and there are important differences. Students would use this history to learn about historian’s tools.
In August the agenda of the class was shifted. As cities and campuses were gripped with protests, I also ended up teaching a useful history. Through our readings and discussions, the #BlackLivesMatter protests were placed into context of a long history of subordination and exclusion of black people and black people’s various forms of resistance. As a discussion-based seminar the emphasis was always on discussion, but the tenor and depth of the discussions became more important and interestingly more difficult to facilitate. The tensions around discussing and understanding the place of race in American society were on full display in this classroom. I tried to navigate through the various levels of understanding and comfort. Though I began the semester by pointing out that this history may unsettle some long and dearly held ideas about the past or it may present information that is angering and frustrating, that was not enough to open the pathways of resistance and discomfort for some. That was a continual work.
I also confronted the issue of whether to make any type of trigger warning statement for the course. Back in August I had read a few things about trigger warning statements and had resolved that in a course about race relations in which there is a fair amount of violence and allegations of rape, that I would not use trigger warnings. Black people in these narratives of violence did not have the luxury of being warned about the possibility of discomforting or re-traumatizing events happening. They lived in a constant state of vigilance and awareness. And unfortunately this year has born that out—that we live in a constant state of not knowing when the next Michael Brown, Rekia Boyd, Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Walter Scott or Freddie Gray would happen. We were on alert that violence permeates the narrative and emerges at different moments. I encouraged students to take care of themselves and each other and to share with the group or with me or trusted advisors if it became too much to handle.
In recognition of the difficulties of discussion and that we struggle to find the language to engage and to express our ideas, we had frequent writing assignments. Most significantly, I encouraged students to revise their papers—as much as they wanted to—in recognition of the fact that we need the space to first see our ideas and then sharpen and refine them. We need the chance to find the language and the organization of that language to convey our ideas. Not only did it contribute to improvements in student writing, but also, I hope it reinforced the course content and understanding that the continued grappling with words and ideas is a natural and important part of developing fluency in conversation.
While the course had the initial aim of using this bit of American history to teach historians tools, it also became a course where I taught history you can use. This content spoke directly to major headlines, providing necessary historical context to what to some people appeared as eruptions that came out of no where. In a time when we are struggling with enrollments in history courses and where liberal arts study more generally is under attack, courses that speak to the contemporary context in direct and nuanced ways are all the more important. While Africana Studies and Black Studies have always centered contemporary relevance, perhaps this is yet another areas where these fertile disciplines can contribute to the academy a sense of vitality and engagement.
