Survey of African American History

Course Description

AMH2091 – Survey of African American History is a 3-credit lecture-discussion course providing a chronological and thematic survey of the history of African Americans from African origins through the present. Students study the social, cultural, economic, and political experiences and contributions of African Americans, examining major periods and developments: African civilizations and the Atlantic world; the transatlantic slave trade; slavery in the colonial and antebellum United States; the Civil War, emancipation, and Reconstruction; the Jim Crow era; the Great Migration; the Harlem Renaissance; the modern Civil Rights movement; the Black Power era; and African American history into the 21st century. The course emphasizes both the experience of oppression and resistance and the cultural, intellectual, political, and economic contributions of African Americans to the broader American story.

The course sits within the Florida Statewide Course Numbering System (SCNS) under History > American History (Specialized) and is offered at approximately 17 Florida public institutions. AMH2091 satisfies the social-science or history general-education requirement at most Florida public institutions. The course is widely available in face-to-face, hybrid, and fully online formats and is designated as a writing-intensive course under Florida State Board of Education Rule 6A-10.030 ("Gordon Rule") at most institutions; a grade of C or higher is required for the course to count toward Gordon Rule satisfaction.

Florida-specific content is significant in many Florida AMH2091 courses: Florida's distinctive role in African American history includes Spanish colonial Florida and Fort Mose (the first free Black community in what became the United States, founded near St. Augustine in 1738), the antebellum Black communities of Florida, Reconstruction-era Florida, the Rosewood massacre (1923), the Tallahassee Bus Boycott (1956), the St. Augustine civil-rights demonstrations (1964), the work of educators including Mary McLeod Bethune (founder of Bethune-Cookman in Daytona Beach) and A. Philip Randolph (born in Crescent City, Florida), and Florida's contemporary African American communities. Some institutions, particularly Florida A&M University (FAMU), use Florida-focused texts including Go Sound the Trumpet! Selections in Florida's African American History by Jackson and Brown.

Learning Outcomes

Required Outcomes

Upon successful completion of AMH2091, students will be able to:

• Describe the major African civilizations and societies from which enslaved Africans were taken: West and West Central African empires (Ghana, Mali, Songhai, Kongo); the cultural, economic, and political complexity of pre-colonial African societies; the diverse African origins of African American populations.
• Analyze the transatlantic slave trade: its development, scale, and human cost; the Middle Passage; the economic and political contexts in Africa, Europe, and the Americas; the legacy of the trade for African societies and African diasporic populations.
• Analyze slavery in colonial and antebellum North America: the development of chattel slavery as a racialized institution; regional differences (Chesapeake, Lowcountry, Spanish Florida, Western frontier); enslaved African Americans' work, family life, religion, music, and culture; resistance to enslavement (rebellion, flight, daily resistance, the Underground Railroad).
• Analyze free Black communities and Black abolitionism before the Civil War: free Black communities in the North and parts of the South; Black abolitionists (Douglass, Truth, Tubman, Walker, Garnet, Stewart); the African American press; the role of African Americans in the broader abolitionist movement.
• Analyze the Civil War and emancipation: African American military service in the Civil War (the U.S. Colored Troops); the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment; the contested meaning of emancipation.
• Analyze Reconstruction: African American political participation; the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments; the rise of African American officeholders, schools, and institutions; the violent overthrow of Reconstruction; the historical interpretations of Reconstruction.
• Analyze the Jim Crow era: the legal codification of segregation; racial violence (lynching, racial terror); disenfranchisement; sharecropping and the agricultural economy; the development of African American institutions, churches, schools, businesses; African American responses to Jim Crow including the work of Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells, Mary Church Terrell, and the founding of the NAACP.
• Analyze the Great Migration and 20th-century African American urban experience: the move from the rural South to Northern, Midwestern, and Western cities; the development of African American urban communities and institutions; the cultural flowering known as the Harlem Renaissance.
• Analyze African American experience in the world wars and interwar period: military service in WWI and WWII; the Double V Campaign; the Tuskegee Airmen; civilian-rights advocacy in the early 20th century.
• Analyze the modern Civil Rights movement: the legal strategy that led to Brown v. Board of Education (1954); the Montgomery Bus Boycott; the work of Martin Luther King, Jr., the SCLC, SNCC, the NAACP, CORE; sit-ins, freedom rides, voting-rights organizing; the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965; the role of women and youth in the movement.
• Analyze the Black Power era and post-1965 politics: Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam; the Black Panther Party; cultural nationalism and the Black Arts Movement; African American political organizing in the late 20th century; the rise of African American electoral power.
• Analyze African American history in the late 20th and early 21st centuries: deindustrialization and its impact on African American communities; mass incarceration; the election of Barack Obama; Black Lives Matter and contemporary movements; ongoing debates about racial justice.
• Analyze African American cultural and intellectual contributions: literature, music (spirituals, blues, jazz, gospel, R&B, hip-hop), visual art, film, scholarship, religion; the central role of African American culture in American culture broadly.
• Apply Florida-specific African American history: Fort Mose and Spanish colonial Florida; antebellum Florida; Reconstruction-era Florida; the Rosewood massacre and other episodes of racial violence; the Tallahassee Bus Boycott (1956); the St. Augustine Movement (1964); Florida-born African American leaders (Mary McLeod Bethune, A. Philip Randolph, Zora Neale Hurston); Florida's HBCUs (FAMU, Bethune-Cookman, Edward Waters); contemporary African American Florida.
• Demonstrate historical thinking: distinguishing primary from secondary sources; evaluating historical evidence; recognizing the role of historical interpretation; understanding how historiography (the writing of history) develops over time.
• Demonstrate college-level writing through historical analysis essays, primary-source interpretation, and research papers (typically 6,000+ words across the semester to satisfy Gordon Rule).

Optional Outcomes

• Engage with specific topics in greater depth: the Harlem Renaissance, the Tuskegee Airmen, the Black Power era, hip-hop history, etc.
• Engage with African American women's history in greater depth.
• Engage with the Black diaspora beyond the United States: Caribbean African experience; African Americans and the broader Atlantic world; African Americans and Africa.
• Engage with African American religious history: the Black church; African Methodist Episcopal Church; Black Catholicism; Black Muslim communities; spirituality and resistance.
• Engage with African American intellectual history: Black political and social thought from Frederick Douglass to W.E.B. Du Bois to Martin Luther King, Jr. to contemporary scholars.
• Conduct primary-source research using Florida-relevant African American history archives.
• Engage with African American material culture through museum visits and primary-document analysis.

Major Topics

Required Topics

• African Origins: West and West Central African societies and civilizations; cultural, economic, and political life in pre-colonial Africa; the diverse African heritage of African American populations.
• The Atlantic Slave Trade: Origins and development of the trade; the Middle Passage; the scale of the trade; African and European participation; the human and cultural cost; the legacy in Africa and the Americas.
• Slavery in Colonial America: The development of chattel slavery as a racialized institution; regional variation (Chesapeake tobacco, Lowcountry rice and indigo, Spanish Florida, Northern colonies); enslaved Africans' work, family, religion, and culture; the development of African American culture from African and American sources.
• Slavery in the Antebellum South: The cotton economy; the domestic slave trade; enslaved life on plantations; community, family, and culture under slavery; resistance (the Stono Rebellion, Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey, Gabriel Prosser, daily resistance, flight); the Underground Railroad.
• Spanish Colonial Florida and Fort Mose: Spanish colonial racial policy in Florida; Fort Mose as the first free Black community in what became the United States (founded 1738 near St. Augustine); the strategic role of free Africans in Spanish Florida.
• Free African Americans and Abolitionism: Free Black communities in the North and South; Black abolitionists (Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, David Walker, Henry Highland Garnet, Maria Stewart); the African American press (Freedom's Journal, The North Star); the role of African Americans in the broader abolitionist movement.
• Civil War and Emancipation: African American military service (the U.S. Colored Troops, ~180,000 soldiers); the Emancipation Proclamation; the Thirteenth Amendment; the contested meanings of emancipation.
• Reconstruction: Black political participation; the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments; African American officeholders (including in Florida); the founding of HBCUs; the violent overthrow of Reconstruction; competing historical interpretations.
• Jim Crow and the Nadir: The legal codification of segregation (Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896); racial violence (lynching, racial terror, the Wilmington massacre 1898, the Tulsa massacre 1921, the Rosewood massacre 1923 in Florida); disenfranchisement; sharecropping and the agricultural economy; the founding of the NAACP (1909) and the National Urban League (1910).
• African American Thought and Activism c. 1900–1940: Booker T. Washington and the Tuskegee Institute; W.E.B. Du Bois and the Niagara Movement; Ida B. Wells and the anti-lynching movement; the Garvey movement; the work of Mary Church Terrell, Mary McLeod Bethune, and other Black women activists; the Harlem Renaissance.
• The Great Migration: The move from the rural South to Northern, Midwestern, and Western cities; the development of African American urban communities; African American institutions and businesses; demographic and cultural transformation.
• The World Wars: African American military service in WWI and WWII; the Double V Campaign; the Tuskegee Airmen; civilian rights organizing during and after the wars.
• The Modern Civil Rights Movement (c. 1954–1968): The NAACP legal strategy and Brown v. Board of Education (1954); the Emmett Till case (1955); the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955–1956); the Tallahassee Bus Boycott (1956); the Little Rock Nine (1957); the sit-ins; the Freedom Rides (1961); the Birmingham Campaign (1963); the March on Washington (1963); the St. Augustine Movement (1964); the Mississippi Summer (1964); Selma and the Voting Rights Act (1965); the work of Martin Luther King, Jr., Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer, Bayard Rustin, John Lewis, and many others.
• The Black Power Era and 1970s–1980s: Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam; the Black Panther Party; cultural nationalism and the Black Arts Movement; the rise of African American electoral power; the founding of the Congressional Black Caucus; African American mayors of major cities.
• Late 20th and Early 21st Century: Deindustrialization and African American communities; mass incarceration and the war on drugs; hip-hop culture; the election of Barack Obama (2008); Black Lives Matter (2013–present); ongoing debates about racial justice and reparations.
• Florida African American History: Florida-specific topics integrated throughout — Fort Mose, antebellum Florida, Reconstruction Florida, Rosewood, the Tallahassee Bus Boycott, the St. Augustine Movement, Mary McLeod Bethune and Bethune-Cookman, A. Philip Randolph, Zora Neale Hurston, FAMU and other Florida HBCUs, contemporary African American Florida.
• African American Cultural Contributions: Music (spirituals, blues, jazz, gospel, R&B, hip-hop); literature (Phillis Wheatley to Toni Morrison and contemporary writers); visual art; film; scholarship; religion; the central role of African American culture in American culture broadly.
• Historical Methods: Primary vs. secondary sources; evaluating evidence; historical interpretation; historiography.

Optional Topics

• African American Women's History: The distinct experience and leadership of African American women across the chronological narrative.
• The Black Diaspora: African Americans in the broader Atlantic world; connections to the Caribbean and Africa.
• African American Religious History: The Black church; AME and other denominations; Black Catholicism; Black Muslim communities; spirituality and resistance.
• African American Intellectual History: The development of Black political and social thought.
• Specific Topics in Depth: The Harlem Renaissance; the Tuskegee Airmen; the Black Power era; hip-hop history; Black women's organizing; etc.
• Florida African American History in Greater Depth: The full range of Florida-specific stories, with primary-source research opportunities.

Resources & Tools

• Most-adopted textbooks at Florida institutions: From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans by John Hope Franklin and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham (McGraw-Hill) — the canonical survey, widely used; Freedom on My Mind: A History of African Americans, with Documents by White, Bay, and Martin (Bedford/St. Martin's); The African American Odyssey by Hine, Hine, and Harrold (Pearson); African Americans: A Concise History by Hine, Hine, and Harrold (Pearson); Created Equal: A History of the United States, with African American emphasis sections.
• Florida-focused text: Go Sound the Trumpet! Selections in Florida's African American History by David H. Jackson Jr. and Canter Brown Jr. (University of Tampa Press) — used at FAMU and recommended at other Florida institutions for Florida-specific content.
• Open-access alternatives: The American Yawp (free, open American history textbook with substantial African American history coverage); various open educational resources from Lumen Learning; the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (NYPL) digital collections; the Library of Congress African American history resources.
• Online learning platforms: McGraw-Hill Connect (paired with Franklin/Higginbotham); Pearson MyLab History; Bedford/St. Martin's LaunchPad; institution Canvas modules.
• Primary-source archives: The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (NYPL); the Library of Congress's African American history materials including the Slave Narrative Collection; the National Museum of African American History and Culture (Smithsonian, Washington DC); the JSTOR African American history collections; the African American Newspapers database (institution library).
• Florida-specific resources: The State Library and Archives of Florida (Tallahassee); the Florida Department of State Division of Library and Information Services; the Black Archives Research Center and Museum at Florida A&M University (FAMU); the Bethune-Cookman University archives (Daytona Beach); the Mary McLeod Bethune Council House National Historic Site; the Fort Mose Historic State Park (St. Augustine); the Olustee Battlefield Historic State Park (Civil War battle with substantial USCT participation); the Rosewood massacre memorial sites; the Lincolnville Museum and Cultural Center (St. Augustine); the Black Heritage Trail of Florida.
• Multimedia resources: PBS documentaries (Eyes on the Prize, The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross); the documentary work of Henry Louis Gates Jr.; HBO and other streaming-platform documentaries; the African American National Biography Online (AANB).
• Tutoring and support: Institution writing centers (especially important for Gordon Rule essays); history librarians; FAMU's Black Archives.

Career Pathways

• K–12 Teacher (Social Studies, History, English) — pathway through Florida education programs; the Florida-specific historical literacy AMH2091 builds is directly relevant.
• Museum Educator / Curator / Public Historian — Florida's African American history museums and cultural sites; the National Museum of African American History and Culture; regional and national institutions.
• Archivist / Library Sciences (with Graduate Study) — Florida public libraries, university archives, state and county historical societies, the Black Archives at FAMU.
• Lawyer (long-term) — historical literacy in civil rights, constitutional law, and racial justice supports legal study; pathway through Florida law schools.
• Community Organizer / Nonprofit Professional — Florida's substantial nonprofit sector; civil-rights and racial-justice organizations.
• Journalist / Cultural Writer — historical literacy supports clear, contextual writing about race and society.
• Policy Analyst / Government Service — Florida government and federal positions involving education, civil rights, criminal justice, and equity policy.
• Higher Education / Academia (with Graduate Study) — pathway into history and African American studies graduate programs.
• Foreign Service / International NGO Work — historical and cultural literacy supports work in African and African-diasporic contexts.
• Social Work / Public Health (with Additional Training) — culturally informed practice in Florida's African American communities.

Special Information

Articulation and Transfer

AMH2091 articulates to all Florida SUS institutions and satisfies social-science or history general-education requirements at most Florida public institutions. A grade of C or higher is required for the course to count toward Gordon Rule satisfaction at most institutions.

The Gordon Rule

AMH2091 is typically designated as a writing-intensive course under Florida State Board of Education Rule 6A-10.030. The total writing volume across formal essays typically meets or exceeds 6,000 words. Common assignment types include short response papers (250–500 words), critical analysis essays (750–1,500 words), primary-source analysis essays (750–1,500 words), and at least one research paper (1,500–2,500 words).

AMH2091 vs. AMH2010 / AMH2020

• AMH2010 — United States History to 1877: general U.S. history survey through Reconstruction.
• AMH2020 — United States History Since 1877: general U.S. history survey from Reconstruction to present.
• AMH2091 (this course) — Survey of African American History: focused depth on the African American experience across the full chronological span.

AMH2091 is sometimes taken alongside AMH2010 and AMH2020 (covering the same chronological span with focused content), or as a substitute for one of them at institutions and programs that allow it. Students should consult their advisor about which history courses best satisfy their degree requirements.

Engaging with Difficult Material

African American history involves sustained engagement with the realities of slavery, racial violence, and systemic injustice. Faculty typically frame difficult material with appropriate context and create space for substantive discussion. The course aims for honest, evidence-based engagement with the historical record — including its hardest dimensions — alongside the cultural, political, and intellectual contributions of African Americans across the full chronological span. Students should expect rigorous, scholarly engagement with the field.

Course Format and Workload

AMH2091 is typically a lecture-discussion course meeting three hours per week, very widely offered in face-to-face, hybrid, and fully online formats. Expect: weekly textbook reading; regular discussion-board posts or in-class discussion; primary-source analysis assignments; 2–3 formal essays; one research paper at most institutions; 2–4 exams. Out-of-class workload typically runs 6–9 hours per week.

Course Code Variations

Florida institutions title this course "Survey of African American History," "African American History," or "Introduction to African American History." The course is consistently 3 credits across institutions. A related upper-division course (AMH3xxx) exists at SUS institutions for history majors with greater theoretical and historiographical depth; students intending to major in history or African American studies should consult their institution's catalog for the upper-division progression.