COURSE DESCRIPTION

The American Revolution was a transformative moment in African American history, a freedom war second only to the Civil War in significance.

African Americans threw themselves into the revolutionary war effort with more enthusiasm and with more at stake than did many white colonists. The chaos of the war itself brought many enslaved men new opportunities for independence as the British Army promised freedom to those who might be willing to desert their rebel masters and join the King’s regiments. But after the British surrendered and evacuated, black fortunes would diverge dramatically. In the north, patriot victory spurred the rise of the anti-slavery movement but in the south that same great victory helped entrench plantation slavery for generations to come. 

This four-part course explores the American Revolution from the unfamiliar perspective of enslaved and free African Americans. Lecture one examines the ways that black Americans seized the unique opportunities provided by the war to declare their independence from slavery. Lecture two explores black activists’ efforts to secure the abolition of slavery in the northern states after the Revolution and enslaved southerners’ far less successful efforts to do likewise in the southern states.

Lecture three uses the provisions of the 1787 United States Constitution to reconstruct the conservative campaign to minimize further slave resistance and shore up the security of southern slave societies. Lecture four returns examines the struggles of legally free black people in northern cities like Philadelphia to build community, achieve respectability, and assert claims to citizenship, using the life of AME minister Richard Allen as a case study.

COURSE CONTENT

Session 1: Declaring Independence
Over long eight years of war, both the Continental Army and the British Army appealed to black Americans for manpower. This lecture argues that how African Americans responded to the call to arms and the chaos of war reveals their own declarations of independence.

 Session 2: Claiming Legal Freedom
After the war, most northern states moved to abolish slavery. Similar proposals in the South faltered and failed, but, as this lecture demonstrates, enslaved people there took matters into their own hands and seized freedom for themselves.

Session 3: The Constitution’s Counter-Revolution
This lecture explores the work done by the 1787 Constitution to repair the damage to the slave system wrought during the revolutionary war. While the Constitution never used the word “slave,” it created a political system that protected and empowered enslavers.

Session 4: The Black Founders
This last lecture follows the struggles of Richard Allen and other first-generation free black leaders in northern cities as they built robust communities of faith and fellowship that could extend and expand the anti-racist fight beyond the legal end of slavery in the North.

LECTURER

Dr Richard Bell is a Professor of History at the University of Maryland. He holds a BA from the University of Cambridge and a PhD from Harvard University. He is the author of the new book Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and their Astonishing Odyssey Home which is shortlisted for the George Washington Prize and the Harriet Tubman Prize. He has won more than a dozen teaching awards, including the University System of Maryland Board of Regents Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching, the highest honour for teaching faculty in the Maryland state system. He has held major research fellowships at Yale, Cambridge, and the Library of Congress and is the recipient of the National Endowment of the Humanities Public Scholar award. Rick is also a Trustee of the Maryland Historical Society and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. 

COURSE STRUCTURE

4 x 1.5 hour sessions. Each session includes an interactive lecture and time for group discussion.

COURSE DATES

Wednesdays 11:00am -12:30pm (Australian Eastern Time)

21 October 2020 | 28 October 2020 | 4 November 2020 | 11 November 2020

REQUIREMENTS

This course does not require any assumed knowledge, only a willingness to learn and an interest in history. Sessions require access to ZOOM (which is free), a device with a camera (such as a tablet or computer with a webcam), and an internet connection.

BOOKING